My 2 Cents: Storm Shelters At Schools

As a father who had three children in a public school building last week, I'm right in the middle of the debate that is now raging about how we keep our students safe here in Tornado Alley.

7 little ones, who were taking their practiced tornado precautions, still perished at Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore.

There was no fortified safe place in that building, nor is there in about one-thousand six hundred fifty other public schools in our state.

And yet, to keep it in perspective, records show last Monday's fatalities at Plaza Towers are the first tornado related deaths in an Oklahoma school since 1945.

That's little comfort to parents I know, because tornadoes are random killers and the next three could all hit schools.

A state legislator is talking about spending $500 million dollars to retrofit Oklahoma schools with tornado safe rooms, it's certainly an idea worth considering, and all new schools should have safe rooms.

And what about building in Tornado Days... like snow days.. where districts cancel classes if there's a high risk of tornado's in the area, some states do that, but Monday was a moderate risk day in Moore.. you can't cancel all of those.

Quite frankly, we've been darn lucky over the last 68 years, but that ended last Monday and

Mother Nature is now demanding we make some tough decisions to keep our students safe.