And yet another poor decision from the Superintendent of Hartselle City Schools. Watch him back peddle on this one and try to place the blame on someone other than himself when public opinion goes against him. That's his standard operating procedure.

To Me, I Would Consider This Child Abuse,,,Putting A Child Thrur This Would Cause The Children Problems un call For,,,How Do You Know Since This Is A Mock Drill So Call, A Real Shooter Might Appear, Nobody Would Know It,Thinking That It Is Part Of The Drill,,Especially Since It Been In The News And In The Newspapers, and not just local news and local newspapers, some weird person might hear about this and try something, I Wouldn't Want My Child There,, It Like Bring Bad Attention To Our School

Some of you may not remember but back when I was in grade school we had bomb drills because the Russians might send one off of Cuba at any moment and we needed to prepare for it. Alarm sounded, we gathered our things and headed down the street to see how long it took us to get home before the bomb nuked us. Not to mention, fire drills, tornado drills where we all got put out in the hall with our heads between our knees,ect. Bottom line is- we were somewhat prepared, we were aware of the fact that bad things happen in this world, you can be trained to react instead of being totally in shock. While the guns may seem a bit strong, that is the reality of the world in which we live. I was not abused or tramatized.

A bomb threat drill is a little different. (1) not likely to have an armed intruder with a gun in your face (2) the psycological difference in defending against "one of them" versus defending against "one of us". That said, this may identify the reversal of our trend toward moving to a more civilized society; a society where we value the innocence of children. Perhaps we will be forced to move back to the point where young children are "schooled" to understand how base and barbaric we can be!? Either way, it is a sad commentary on our current plight. Maybe the educators should hold the training without the children. We may just be pre-traumatizing them......

"Students whose parents do not want them to participate will be excused from school, Reed said."

Enough said.

John, you are right, the children would be excused from school. However, what if both parents work and cannot pull them out of school?

My grandaughter is in kindergarten in another school system. She does not know about the Sandy Hook shootings. We took great measures to make sure she didn't hear about it outside of school and were very relieved that she didnot hear about it while in school. We would definitely not want her exposed to such a drill.

One thing about it if something does happen in the hartselle schools, because they weren't prepared the two faces in hartselle will sure enough blame everyone but thierselves.

Why not just have a lockdown drill without a fake intruder. If everyone is expecting the drill, will their reactions be true or planned?

Keeping children in the dark and not letting them know what to do in a certain situation is not going to make them safe.

Why? not High School instead of the elementary.

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA, ALL SCHOOLS THROUGHOUT THE NATION SHOULD PATTERN THEM SELVES BY HARTSELLE'S POLICIES . PREPARENESS IS BETTER THAN THE ATERNATIVE. IF SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DID MOCK SHOOTHING DRILLS, I GUARENTEE NOT AS MANY CHILDREN WOULD HAVE DIED. ISN'T THAT WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT?

HAVE A PLAN, BE PREPARED, KNOW WHAT TO DO BEFORE IT HAPPENS. HAVING A MOCK DRILL LIKE THIS MAY EVEN UNCOVER FLAWS IN THEIR CURRENT SYSTEM. I CONGRATULATE THE HARTSELLE SCHOOL SYSTEM FOR BEING THE FIRST IN THE COUNTY TO DO THIS.

DONT WAIT FOR A REAL FIRE TO PRACTICE A FIRE DRILL. DONT WAIT TILL A REAL TORNADO BEFORE YOU PRACTICE A TORNADO DRILL. WHATEVER DRILLS ARE NECESSARY TO KEEP OUR STUDENTS SAFE, "ARE NECESSARY TO KEEP OUR STUDENTS SAFE" PERIOD.

Unfortunately, children today do not have the same luxury to have their innocence. So sad. Our children are going to hear about all the scary things happening from other kids at school. It must be nice to have a child who hasn't heard about Sandy Hook. I wish i had had that option but i knew i had to tell my son because i did not want him hearing from other kids at school which is exactly what happened... thankfully i had already talked with him so he wasn't shocked when other kids at school were talking about it. There isn't an easy answer to any of this. No one really knows how to handle it.

Since the reporter didn't see fit to provide a link to the petition online, here it is. Just copy it and paste it into the address bar of your browser.

http://www.change.org/petitions/hartselle-city-schools-board-of-education-deny-a-live-shooting-drill-at-f-e-burleson-elementary?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=url_share&utm_campaign=url_share_after_sign

ANY PARENT CONSIDERING TO SIGN THIS PETITION, SHOULD SERIOUSLY CONSIDER HOME SCHOOLING. IF YOU WON'T LET THE SCHOOL SYSTEM KEEP YOUR STUDENT SAFE, THEN THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS TO DO IT YOURSELF.