Parents are taking safety from school shooters into their own hands.
Ever since last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., caregivers have been stocking up on bulletproof backpacks, tracking devices and doorstops — anything to give children a fighting chance at surviving a gunman’s attack at school.
Lisa Singer, mother to a 6-year-old girl, Dylan, preordered a Jiobit, a GPS tracker designed specifically for kids, after hearing the horrific news of the 17 slaughtered in Florida on Feb. 14.
“I was thinking about what I could buy that would help her,” said Singer. “I worry about her every single day but I’m not going to have her wear a bulletproof vest to school.”
Singer settled on the $99 device (plus a monthly $9.99 fee), which weighs less than four quarters. Still in the pre-order stage, the tracker signals a child’s real-time location to parents via an app. Users can denote “safe zones” and get alerts when the child has arrived or leaves that location.
Singer, who works in real estate and lives in Midtown West, plans to attach the Jiobit to Dylan’s shoe.
“She’s already been on lockdown once for a suspicious package outside her classroom,” said Singer. “This way, God forbid something happens, I’ll know exactly where she is … I’d spend anything to make her safer.”
She’s not alone.
BulletBlocker, a company that sells bulletproof backpacks ranging in price from $199 for a girly pink one to $490, has seen sales jump 300 percent since the Florida shooting, according to owner Joe Curran, who started the company in 2007 to protect his two school-aged children after the Virginia Tech massacre.
Four days ago, Larry Gilbert, a 53-year-old from upstate Syracuse, shelled out $95 for a metal device called the “JustinKase” that is placed under a door and latches to the door’s jamb to prevent entry. It was invented by a 17-year-old Wisconsin high school student, Justin Rivard, to keep active school shooters out of classrooms.
“My wife is a teacher at a local school and with what has gone on lately, I’ve become more and more concerned with her safety and her students’ safety,” said Gilbert, who has two daughters, ages 10 and 14.
“They have first aid kids and fire extinguishers, so you know what? Why not throw a little extra door security at my wife’s school? Something for the piece of mind,” he said.
“Just like a fire extinguisher, I hope it sits in the corner and is never used.”
One New York mother, who lives in Inwood and asked that her name not be used, said she’s even toying with the idea of forming a group homeschool to guarantee her two young children’s safety.
“It would be like a co-op, where ten families share the cost of a teacher’s salary and insurance, each paying $6,000 or $7,000,” said the 37-year-old actress.
“It’s not anything I ever thought I’d ever do,” she admitted.
Katie Cornelis of Southbury, Conn., is still surprised by the thousands of messages she’s received after posting on Facebook last week about the doorstops she gave her two nieces after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“Until something changes in our world, I think people are just needing to feel that they can do something,” said Cornelis, who says if a gunman shoots out the door lock, a doorstop can keep the door shut.
Doorstops are “cheap and effective,” said Cornelis. “Schools don’t have budgets for armed security guards or bulletproof backpacks.”
“One mom messaged me and said, ‘I bought ten of them and distributed them to people,’” she said. “It’s small but it’s powerful.”