Ep 140: Part 2 - What a Teacher Learned from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas / Parkland School Shooting
Episode 140
Published Oct 29, 2026
Duration: 22:57
Episode Summary
The cameras at Marjory Stoneman Douglas were working. No one was watching them. Kim Krawczyk, a teacher who survived the Parkland shooting, shares what she would prioritize to prevent and prepare for school violence. She and host Bill Godfrey discuss whether teachers should hear simulated gunfire in training, what it takes for behavioral threat assessment teams to work, and how pressure to report “zero incidents” can leave struggling students without help. This is Part 2 of a four-part series. For school safety training, take the free one-hour SSAVEIM Foundations school safety course at https://ncier.org/ssaveim/foundations.
Episode Notes
What should schools actually prioritize to prevent and prepare for a school shooting? Kim Krawczyk was teaching math at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. In Part 2, she explains where she believes schools are missing warning signs, why she thinks repetitive drills can condition students instead of preparing them, and why the incentives behind school reporting can work against student safety.
For school administrators, teachers, school resource officers, threat assessment team members, and public safety trainers, this conversation challenges some common assumptions. Kim and host Bill Godfrey discuss whether teachers should hear simulated gunfire in training, what it takes for behavioral threat assessment to work, and why a school reporting “zero incidents” should raise questions rather than confidence.
In this episode:
🔹 Gunfire in training: opt-in or not at all? Bill weighs the value of staff learning what gunfire sounds like against the fear it can cause and asks Kim about new devices that reproduce the sound. Kim argues for opt-in participation, warning that requiring it of brand-new teachers could leave them “pre-traumatized.”
🔹 Kim’s top priorities. At MSD, the cameras were working, but no one was watching them. She calls for a trained, dedicated campus monitor, fewer repetitive student drills, more authentic teacher training, and taking teacher reports about troubled students seriously.
🔹 Threat assessment and the “zero incidents” problem. Kim says behavioral threat assessment can work only with handpicked, well-trained people who don’t dismiss red flags as “blowing smoke.” She also describes how pressure to look like a perfect school can leave struggling students without help.
💬 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗨𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: Does your school or district’s reporting culture encourage staff to raise concerns, or to keep the numbers clean? Share your experience in the comments.
🎧 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗙𝗨𝗟𝗟 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗢𝗡 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗕𝗘:
Part 1 – What prepared a teacher for the MSD shooting: https://youtu.be/qT7nqXZLQPI
Part 2 - School drills, warning signs, and behavioral threat assessment: https://youtu.be/fPID4vPjT5A
Part 3 – Locking classroom doors, evacuation, and shared responsibility: Coming soon
Part 4 – Reunification and why staying behind a locked door can be safer: Coming soon
🎓 Take the free one-hour SSAVEIM Foundations school safety course: https://ncier.org/ssaveim/foundations
📌 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦
00:00 – Introduction: Kim Krawczyk, MSD shooting survivor
00:26 – Live gunfire and gunfire simulators in school training
03:06 – Opt-in, opt-out, and the risk to new teachers
04:45 – What would you have done?: The reality inside the classroom
06:54 – If you could wave a magic wand: Kim’s top priorities
07:51 – The cameras were working, but no one was watching
09:39 – Fewer student drills, more authentic teacher training
10:07 – Listening to teachers about early warning signs
11:13 – Behavioral threat assessment teams: what “done right” means
14:22 – Apathy and sweeping concerns under the rug
16:10 – School reporting systems and the “zero incidents” problem
19:17 – Are we incentivizing the wrong things?
#SchoolSafety #Parkland #ThreatAssessment #TeacherSafety #ActiveShooterTraining
Transcript
Karla Torres:Welcome back. I'm Karla Torres, and in Part 2 with Kim Krawczyk we're discussing school drills, warning signs, adn the tough conversations schools and communities can't avoid. If you missed Part 1, the link is in the description.
Kim Krawczyk:
Did we march for it? Yea. Did it happen? Sure did. Is it still happening? Yep. So here we are. That's our reality.
Karla Torres:
Now let's get right into it.
Bill Godfrey:
I'm curious, because this is a controversial topic that comes up a lot with these kinds of scenario training or exercises, is the idea of gunfire. And there have been, excuse me, and there have been some stories about people conducting exercises that just anybody that's experienced doing that on the public safety side would say, not just no but hell no, absolutely, that is not the way to run exercise training. But the idea of live gunfire, on the one hand, you can make the argument that people learn what it sounds like. They know what it sounds like from their room. They know what it sounds like when it's in the stairwell, when it's in the hallway, when it's outside. They get a chance to know how to identify that, which clearly has value should that horrible day come.
But on the flip side of that, there are people that go, "No, that's too much. It scares people, it frightens people," and it certainly clearly can, especially when there's no warning that that's what you're doing. That's what I was really kind of talking to is, there are people that would pull surprise drills with live gunfire, and that is simply unacceptable in any professional training venue.
There's also now a new device, and I have, let me be clear, I've not experienced it personally, but have talked to some people that have, that's a box, that instead of it's, you know, like a size of a shoebox, that has speakers in it and is designed just to put off an accurate audio sound of gunfire. So there's no gun, there's no smoke, there's no smell of those kinds of things, but it reproduces the sound with a fairly high degree of accuracy, supposedly.
Do you think, because you're still in the education business, you're still working, you're still in a school, in leadership positions, do you think it's worth the discomfort to have teachers experience that and what that sounds like? Or does it still need to be an opt-in, opt-out, or is it just something we shouldn't be doing in schools?
Kim Krawczyk:
I think it needs to be an opt-in, opt-out, because I think it would alleviate for some people some of the anxiety that they have of, "How will I know what to do?" Right? But I'm gonna say, if I'm coming in as a new teacher, and I'm 23, 24 coming out of school, and one of the very first things that you're telling me is I have to be prepared to, not just exist, but activate under gunfire, oh, and by the way, here's what it sounds like in your room, I think you've pre-traumatized an entire echelon, right, that whole level of your new teachers. And I think, sorry, I don't mean to laugh, except that I run into this all the time, I think if it's an opt-in, it will be a very humbling experience for some of those people who are like, "Well, I'll tell you what I would have done."
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Kim Krawczyk:
Like, "Didn't you have any textbooks in your classroom? You couldn't have just grabbed a geometry book and thrown it at them?" That would be one magic book, right? To stop an AR15.
Bill Godfrey:
Not like another magic bullet we've heard about in the news.
Kim Krawczyk:
Right? I'm like, what? I don't know what kind of geometry textbooks you have at your school, but hey, more power to you, I guess.
But instead of like, oh yeah, I'd run into this, and I would think, and then say, "Well, don't go so fast." Because as you're saying, "I'm gonna run towards this gunfire and be the hero of the day and take care of all this business," you've got 25 to 40 sets of eyes sitting behind you that you are ultimately responsible for. Look around your room, feel your circumstance, understand that there's more to it than just knocking the Billy badass out of the way. You are in a situation, right, and everything's involved. You've got kids that are panicking. In my room, I had kids that were, you know, processing out loud, I had kids that were crying, I had kids that were, you know, trembling. You know, in other rooms, there were kids that were passing out. Some of the rooms on the first floor, you know, kids were having accidents because their teachers are just like, "My door's unlocked, my door's unlocked." Like, now once you've heard that proclaimed, you're panicking, that gunfire's right in front of you, you're hearing screams from other classrooms that are being fired into.
And so, it just creates a, you know... I just think that if you haven't been there, you have to be mindful of the fact that it's so much more than you just being in a corner with 25 kids for the 48 seconds or whatever it is that's required by state law before they release you on an announcement, right? I think that's one of the things that we need to communicate to the teachers to get them to understand. You know, I pray every single day that it never happens again. Did we march for it? Yep. Did it happen? Sure did. Is it still happening? Yep. So, here we are. That's our reality.
Bill Godfrey:
If you could wave a magic wand and change the way schools are preparing, whether it's physical preparedness, training of teachers, of staff, of school resource officers, of mental health counselors, whatever, where do you think you would prioritize those things? What are your top three or four items?
Kim Krawczyk:
So, part of me wants to say trust the teacher, right? Most of these kids, they were identified at a very young age knowing that they had some type of underlying issue that needed to be worked with. But as I'm saying that, I would also have to say that we know that people can come from the outside and inflict these same types of things. And so I think the very, very first thing, what's always kind of been on my mind, one of the things we did not have at Douglas but that we did have at Coral Glades, is an authentic professionally trained designated campus monitor. Those cameras were all working. No one was watching them. No one. And so the opportunity for egress when it presented itself, the kid just gets out of the car, literally gets out of an Uber, grabs his crap and just comes on into the building without anything. And with all of this wonderful expensive equipment that we have now, not one person was watching, not one.
I've had some people come to me, "Do you think AI would be good for this? Do you think this? Oh, here's this new opportunity or software or this kind of thing." I don't think a machine, especially with all the anomalies that happen on school campuses, I mean, you're working with human factors, right? You know, if the kids aren't loonies, the teachers are, we're all over the place, this is what we do, we all come together and we learn and we play games, right, and we have all of these things. But I think that if you're gonna provide cameras all over that campus, somebody should be watching them. That would be my very first thing.
And then you have a person who can make a decision, hey, why did that person come in through the cafeteria doors and not check in through the front doors? Hey, why did that particular gate, you know, get unlocked at this time? And so, that would be one of my very first things.
Another is the authentic training with the teachers, making it more personable, right? Cutting down on the number of exercises with these kids. I just really think you're creating these situations where they become, like I said, complacent, or they don't listen to the teacher, they say, "Okay, I've done this a thousand times, so when I'm on 1001, I'm just going to do the same old thing that I've always been told," right?
And then, honestly, we have to listen to some of these teachers when they tell you there's something here that needs to be looked in, there's a deeper issue that's happening with this student. Right? I mean, if the kid's having those kinds of troubles, maybe they need a home visit, maybe they need, you know, get in touch with the parents, talk to them about therapeutics, right? But story after story is always, you know, it's a second grade teacher reported that he was having violent episodes in class, or, you know? That also is something that needs support. Because if we can circumvent some of this, you're not cutting out all of it, that's why I say, you know, you need other people coming in, but you can at least reduce some of those internal issues that you might have with students who just carry a gun in their backpack to school like it's perfectly normal because they're upset about a situation and now that is their solution.
Bill Godfrey:
In the last few years, several years, there's been a move towards these behavioral threat assessment teams. I assume you've heard of this. Some schools have embraced it, some schools have said no, and some are giving it lip service, I mean, it's the typical spread. Do you think that is a good way to approach a teacher referral, or something that leads to an encounter that, you know, it hasn't gone to hell yet, but whoa, that was a big old red flag, do you think that program can really be helpful if it's done right?
Kim Krawczyk:
Yes, if it's done right. So that's what I was going to say is, to be honest with you, you have to have authentic, handpicked, well-trained, well-versed people that are coming to the table and taking this seriously. They can't show up and just say, "Well, Jimmy John SueBob was a troubled youth years ago, so, you know, ah, they're just blowing smoke." Because you and I both know, any random Tuesday, you're gonna open up an email that says, "Can you identify this student?," and there's Jimmy John SueBob with a nine millimeter in his hand, and a stack of cash, or whatever picture he's taking to put on Instagram to get his followers. That's access.
We can't automatically assume that these kids are just blowing smoke, or they're just talking to talk, or they're just being tough, or they're doing some of these things because they're frustrated. We have to take the opportunity to look into them. Now, you know, are we looking at every single kid in every single school? No. Do you have to come up with a system where you can kind of like divine out, or read out the kids that you know are gonna be special cases, and some of the kids just need to be referred to like a social worker? That's why you get your SROs or SRDs involved. These are the professionals, these guys know, they know these kids, they are in the communities, they understand what some of these trigger warnings are. We have to come together and have a conversation about those things no matter how uncomfortable they are, or how much you might like the kid, you know, on the other side, or you know, fist bump them in the hallways, if you're seeing things, this is the see something, say something. If you're seeing something that the kid's going through, why wouldn't you, even if it wasn't gonna save a hundred other lives, why wouldn't you at least take the time to maybe look at where that child might need help where they are right now to not do something that damaging, harmful or hurtful in the future?
Bill Godfrey:
Have you encountered those kinds of challenges with apathy, or you know, trying to sweep it under the rug? And how do we combat that? How do we get people to realize you're not helping yourself or anyone else if you do that, you're putting people at risk? Any thoughts on that?
Kim Krawczyk:
So it's just like you said, you're not helping yourself or anyone else, right? We're working with human factors, we're trying to grow these kids into being productive parts of society. I know there's a lack of gentleman's agreement on what the finished product of a public school looks like, right? That's always going to be a thing forever and ever. But as we struggle with some of that, we also have to kind of remember that we're there for the whole child. And so, is there apathy? Yeah, I, you know, had somebody bring me a picture where the kid was drawing out, you know, very inappropriate symbols and some violent situations, writing things. And you know, you take it to administration, and they're just like, "Oh no, I know this kid, ah, he's, you know, blowing smoke," or whatever, "Yeah, he's just blowing off steam, it's gonna be fine." But we know through studies that that's an indicator, right? And so maybe you don't have to take it to the Nth degree where this kid's like the next school shooter, but he could be exhibiting violence in other areas. He could be somebody who's harming someone at home. He could be someone who's, you know, doing things.
So as part of this, a part that's so frustrating is these school reporting systems, right? And you'll have to excuse me if I'm, like going off on a thing, but they're so worried about having zero incidents on campus or looking like their school is Peter Perfect, or looking at like, nothing ever happens here, because everybody is, you know, well behaved and well versed, and you know, we're right out in front of it and making sure that these kids are toeing the line every day. You and I both know in reality, those aren't things that are happening, right?
The year before, the '16/'17 school year, the year before I got to Stoneman Douglas, the principal reported zero incidents on campus. And there's 3,150 kids on that school campus, you cannot tell me that nothing happened. Nothing happened? So if nothing happened, that means that anybody who did have an issue wasn't recognized, wasn't dealt with, received zero help, the families had no contact, no idea of what was going on. And the teachers were the ones who had to tolerate or put up with any of the effects, because, I mean, you know, vaping pills, things like that, things that are happening, if those things are happening, right, then you're not hearing your teachers, because I'm pretty sure your teachers are reporting, "Hey, this kid didn't look right today. We maybe need to call home and see how he's doing."
They're so worried about getting that. I think it's artificial or arbitrary, but I guess there's some things that go into it, but they're so worried about getting that score for being the school that, you know, everybody wants to move to. Oh, we need to make sure that we have an A school in our neighborhood because homes are expensive, we got to come here. This is a Parkland bubble. People are not going to pay $1,200,000 for a house that sits across the street from a school that has issues on a regular basis. But they did pay $1.2 million to sit across the street from a school that had a mass shooting.
So you pick. Which side would you have rather been on, right? That's the thing that I become most frustrated with, is, we're dealing with kids, they're not perfect, we don't exist in a vacuum. Yep, things are going to happen. Did we handle it? We did. Our SRD got out in front of it, he did, knew exactly what was going on, our principal knew what was going on. We've taken care of these things. These kids that were using are now in a program, or at least we've gotten in touch with their parents to let them know, "Hey, just so you know, your child had contraband on campus, and we really need to talk about the fact that that can't happen again, because if your kid is taking it, that may be one thing, but we can't have them distributing to other kids," right?
Bill Godfrey:
Do you think we're incentivizing the wrong things?
Kim Krawczyk:
Absolutely.
Instead of really looking at what a school should be, again, because we can't come to this agreement of what a finished product looks like, right? A lot of people would say, "Oh, well, you know, the valedictorian got 27 offers to schools." Okay, that's your first kid, that's your number one kid. What happened with the last kid? And all of those kids in between? When we're looking at trying to build up all of these... And I'm not saying they shouldn't get recognition for all the things that they're doing, right? Teachers are doing great things, kids are doing great things, schools are doing great things, but the reality is we're growing children, we're part of the village now. And if you're gonna be part of a village, then you're gonna take that role and responsibility seriously, and you are gonna show up for those families.
And it is impossible, and it's hard, and it's expensive, and it's emotionally straining, and it's pressure. But if that's what we're doing, if that's what we're driving, you know, the American public educational system to look like, like, then let's do it, let's commit to that, instead of creating all this smoke about the things that, quote, unquote, "aren't happening on our school districts, on our school campuses," why don't we talk about the things that are, and how we're going to deal with them, and programs that we have, right?
We know that vaping is a problem. We have PSAs about it all the time. They're paying for alarms going into these restrooms so that if the kids go in and vape, it can set it off. But what programs are we really bringing into the families of communities? What are we doing with our PTSA and, you know, our PTOs, and all of these, whatever the different community outreach programs that are within your school? Are we really talking to the parents about some of the things that are going on in these campuses? Are we really talking about some of the things?
The opinion is everybody's gonna race away to a private school, or everybody's gonna race away to a parochial school, or everybody's gonna start homeschooling their kid. And I don't think that's necessarily the case if you approach it the right way, if you look at it in the understanding of, we understand what it takes to keep your kid in a safe learning environment. Isn't that the key? They're not learning if they're not safe. We talk about, "They don't learn if they're not fed." We talk about, "They don't learn if they're not loved," We talk about, "They don't learn," right, "if they're not kept clean," and whatever else you want to say, but we don't talk about the fact that if those kids aren't safe, they're not learning. And if we want to create those safe environments, those are tough conversations, but they have to be held. They have to be held.
Karla Torres:
We have a lot more ground to cover so be sure to stick around as we continue our series with Kim Krawczyk. Be sure to like, subscribe, and turn on notification so you're the first to know the moment it drops. Comment below or email us as info@c3pathways.com for topic suggestions or questions. I'm Karla Torres, you're producer, and until next time, stay safe.