MISSOURI, USA — A Missouri school district has taken delivery of bulletproof, protective panels that double as classroom whiteboards, in an effort to provide defensive tactics against active shooters in our schools.
While the superintendent agreed to be identified in this story, he asked 5 On Your Side not to identify the school district, for the sake of defensive strategy.
“We think about these panels in terms of threat mitigation and all the different layers of security you want to have," Matt Frederickson said. "They seemed intriguing to me as far as another layer of security in the building envelopes that we’ve made.”
Executive Wood Products, a Sullivan, Missouri, furniture manufacturer is making the bulletproof school equipment for use in schools, businesses, and government offices.
The panels are roughly four by six feet and weigh about 400 pounds.
While they are covered with tack board or erasable whiteboard commonly used in schools, the backbones of the panels are steel, roughly a half-inch thick.
“Let’s say an active shooter comes through the door,” said Paul Alexander, owner of Executive Wood Products. “What he’s looking for are soft targets.”
Alexander is talking to a group of school district administrators about the ideal placement of his product in their schools.
“You have three options, right? Hide, fight or flight,” Alexander said in the hallway just outside the school office. “If you put it over there, it’s going to be too close to the door. What you need is time to maneuver it if he comes to the door.”
The bulletproof whiteboards are maneuverable because they are anchored on four wheels.
Alexander said the steel in his bulletproof whiteboards is five-sixteenths of an inch thick. He said it will stop any weapon up to and including a 308-caliber rifle, AR-15 and an AK-47, which are the weapons we frequently hear used in school shootings.
Frederickson said the bulletproof whiteboards are just part of the district’s active shooter defense plan.
“At all of our entrances we have this glass with this bullet-resistant film,” Frederickson said as he showed 5 On Your Side. “It actually has this special caulk around the edges.”
Alexander said to the group of administrators, “I invite somebody to give it a push.”
School Resource Officer David Barton, who serves as a sheriff’s deputy, took him up on it, standing behind the whiteboard and pushing it down the hallway toward an imaginary gunman at the front door.
“I really like the mobility in them,” Barton said. "The fact that they’re very innocuous, I think was the word he used. You can’t really tell that it’s there.”
“It is bi-directional,” Alexander said, wrapping up his demonstration. “Either side is bulletproof.”
It is as if administrators are learning a new foreign language.
“When a projectile goes in, or a bullet,” Alexander said. “It actually cauterizes itself behind the bullet, and no shrapnel or spalling comes out.”
5 On Your Side is helping in the search for solutions to the active shooter crisis plaguing our nation’s schools.
Previously we have filed reports about the use of safety apps and shatter-proof windows in schools.
This marks the third report 5 On Your Side has produced on Executive Wood Products’ bulletproof school equipment and furniture. The first introduced his manufacturing plant. The second was produced when Alexander’s company took delivery of some of the steel that serves as the backbone of his product.
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