They have asthma attacks, write their last wills, soil themselves, and text family members final goodbyes.

They’re not refugees from a war zone — they’re some of the 4.1 million students subjected to school lockdowns in the 2017-18 school year.

Lockdowns have become standard practice in the US education system, a consequence of the nation’s gun violence epidemic in schools. But they are creating a “secondary crisis” resulting in psychological harm to schoolchildren who live in near-constant fear that they are in danger in the classroom, according to an expansive analysis by the Washington Post.

More children endured lockdowns during the 2017-18 school year than the populations of Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware and Vermont combined, according to the report.

Over 6,200 lockdowns were held across the country in the 2017-18 school year both as a precautionary measure and for immediate safety, according to the Washington Post. On any given day, there were 16 school lockdowns across the country, nine of which were “related to gun violence or the threat of it,” the paper reported.

Following the February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida which left 17 dead, there was a sharp spike in the rate of lockdowns nationally. The highest number of incidents leading to school lockdowns occurred in the two weeks after the tragedy, the Washington Post reported.

‘When I was that age, I thought about lunch. They shouldn’t be preparing to die.’More than 25,300 students experienced gunfire incidents on campus during the last school year; there was a gun-related school lockdown every day between Labor Day 2017 and Memorial Day 2018, according to the newspaper.
One million students subjected to lockdowns were in elementary school, with 220,000 of them being in kindergarten or pre-K.

During a year that broke the record for school shootings in the US, 94 people were shot and 33 people were killed on school grounds in 2018.

And all of these lockdowns are having an unintended side effect: traumatized students.

In early December, Lake Brantley High School in Florida held an unannounced “Code Red” drill to warn of an active shooter; however, students weren’t warned the lockdown was simply an exercise. Students were left contending with nightmares and anxiety about going back to school, according to the Miami Herald.

Cathy Kennedy-Paine, head of the National Association of School Psychologists’ crisis response team, said students sobbed during the drill and suffered asthma attacks.

While drills are essential, they must be done with care, she told the Washington Post.

“To do that to children, I think that’s unconscionable,” Kennedy-Paine said.

Parents were outraged by the unannounced drill, arguing that no child should have to text their parents and loved ones a last goodbye.

The parents’ protests resulted in the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office vowing to change its policy on “Code Red” drills. A spokesman for the school, however, told the Herald that it’s important to conduct some drills without warning so students take them seriously.

In another incident, Javon Davies, a 12-year-old student at Jones Valley Middle School in Birmingham, Alabama, wrote a will to his family after a threat was reported to the school.

“Hey family,” he wrote. “I love y’all. Y’all put the clothes on my back. You stick by my side and I love you very much. Love, Javon.”

“It just broke my heart,” Davies’ mother, Mariama, told AL.com. “When I was that age, I thought about lunch. They shouldn’t be preparing to die.”

The Washington Post’s reporting was based on a review of “20,000 news stories and data from school districts in 31 of the country’s largest cities.”

The newspaper said its final numbers could have been higher because many school districts don’t track lockdowns or how many children they impact. The lack of news coverage of incidents at urban schools in high-crime areas could also have influenced the findings.