Back in 2014, the corporation Hardwire LLC convinced schools to buy military armor modified into the shape of whiteboards to protect children against the imagined shooters who were fictively just around the corner. These bulletproof whiteboards cost $399 per unit and only measure 18×20 inches, not enough to actually cover a body in an attack, an attack that despite media hype is vanishingly unlikely to come to your school.
2016 is almost gone. Three years into the bulletproof-whiteboards-will-save-your-teachers-and-schoolkids experiment, not one bulletproof whiteboard in the United States of America has been used to block any bullets in any school. This is because our schools are safe places.
I feel confident in declaring that 2016 will pass without any miraculous $399 18×20 whiteboard bullet deflections in our nation’s schools. I feel confident that 2017 will also pass without incident. The question is, when will school superintendents feel enough political confidence to stop wasting our money to cover their behinds with $399 whiteboards?
