The thickness of classroom tables is not a trivial detail to the Lindbergh Schools’ superintendent Tony Lake. “You can build a barricade,” says Lake, who on a recent afternoon is crouching inside his district’s newly constructed high school to muscle a long table upward so that it stands on end. “If somebody is shooting through that window,” he says, gesturing forward, “and also this table, it might get through and hit you, but it wouldn’t do as much damage.”
It’s a scenario that a superintendent must contemplate in a country with abundant firearms counted 144 such incidents from 2018 through 2022. Last October, at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, an alum killed two and wounded several others after shooting out the window of a side door and letting himself in. That fact, according to interviews with education officials in the region, compelled some area school leaders to take a closer look at their own existing perimeters.
