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More than half of schools have no idea what to do when an active shooter walks in

Schools are more likely to hold fire drills than active shooter preparations.

Every Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teacher had spoken to every single class about what to do in a school shooting.

“They knew what to do and we knew what to do,” Melissa Falkowski, a teacher at the Parkland, Florida school, told MSNBC the night of the shooting. “I don’t think we could have been more prepared than we were today.”

But it wasn’t enough: On Wednesday, a gunman shot and killed 17 people in Stoneman Douglas’ hallways and classrooms. Falkowski ending up saving the lives of 19 of her students by barricading inside her classroom closet.

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In the 19 years since two teenagers gunned down 13 people in a Columbine, Colorado, high school, more and more schools have sought to train kids for the possibility of a shooter one day walking into their building. The federal government has even issued national guidance on how to handle a school shooter, instructing officials to teach kids some variation of “Run, Hide, Fight” — which instructs people caught in an active-shooter situation to try to get away from a gunman and, if necessary, confront him.

READ: The Army is using videogame technology to simulate school shootings

But even as the frequency of school shootings skyrockets, far too many schools still remain unprepared, experts say, and disagreements still linger over whether to teach kids to fight back.

A March 2016 Government Accountability Office survey found that out of 51 state educational agencies, 40 require individual schools to conduct exercises, like drills, to prepare students for emergencies. But only 12 states explicitly require that schools run exercises that prepare students for active shooter situations.

“More than half of [schools] are not adequately prepared,” said John Curnutt, assistant director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University, which uses federal grants to train people about how to handle active shooter situations and is recommended by the FBI. “They definitely have an emergency plan in a big three-ring binder somewhere on the campus… But as a culture in the school, there’s very few of them that are really ready.”

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READ: All the times Nikolas Cruz was reported to authorities before the shooting

Experts say that kids need more than the occasional drill on how to evacuate a school or lock down a classroom. (In a school lockdown, teachers and students typically hole up in their classrooms in silence, with the lights off.) Instead, they say schools need to hold frequent, frank training and conversations.

“How often do you practice this type of situation? How often do schools take the time to have drills on safety procedures?” asked Mac Hardy, director of operations for National Association of School Resource Officers, which oversees sown law enforcement officers who work in schools. “The conversation should be consistent with staff and personnel… I mean, monthly, at teacher workshops, [at] teacher meetings — because they have those once a week — and these conversations should be as short as 10 minutes.”

An estimated 67 percent of schools held at least one exercise to teach kids how to handle an active shooter between 2012 and 2015, according to the Government Accountability Office report. And if that number sounds high, it pales in comparison to the 97 percent of schools that held at least one fire drill — despite the fact that fatalities due to fires are much less common. While five people died in school fires between 2011 and 2013, that same time period saw 166 people die in school shootings, according to a FBI and Justice Department report.

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The office surveyed school officials about this disparity, and found that some worried running active shooter exercises could cause anxiety, including among parents. “Officials from one of these districts noted the difficulty of striking a balance between providing knowledge and inciting fear, particularly at schools with younger children,” the report found.

“There [are] people that choose to be in denial, that they will play the odds,” Curnutt said. “They will not take any special precautions, or take any extra effort, because that [takes] time and money and most school districts are already strapped for time and money and their staff’s attention span.”

Schools may also disagree about what to actually tell children to do in active shooter situations. Jeff Zisner, who trains schools on how to handle such scenarios as president of AEGIS Securities & Investigations, says most experts offer the same advice: “If you can create distance and barriers between you and the bad guy, do it,” he said. “And if you can’t, lockdown shelter in place, inform law enforcement, and prepare to fight back if you have to.”

READ: How Florida students changed the way we experience school shootings

Zisner acknowledges that these instructions can become “exponentially more difficult” to follow when dealing with children, but stresses that if high school students are willing and able to fight, teachers shouldn’t necessarily stop them.

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“These are real circumstances with real ramifications, and your job is to do the best you can given your experience and knowledge,” he explained.

But federal agencies still appear to differ in their interpretation of “Run, Hide, Fight.” A 2013 guide issued by the Department of Justice, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and the Department of Health and Human suggests that adults consider confronting a shooter as a last resort. These agencies purposefully refrained from directing children to fight, a Department of Education official told VICE News.

In contrast, the FBI does not officially take a position on children fighting, according to the Government Accountability Office report, and believes the guide was designed to “allow each community to determine whether to discuss with high school students the option of fighting.”

These differences may seem miniscule. However, in a terrifying, overwhelming situation where people may only have minutes to make a choice, they could mean the difference between life and death. The lack of clarity may also decrease the nation’s overall preparedness.

“Not all relevant agencies and officials are included in collaborative efforts or are aware of related efforts and resources,” the report notes, “and agencies are offering different interpretations of the same federal guidance — all of which risks wasting limited federal resources on duplicative, overlapping, or fragmented efforts.”

Ultimately, Falkowski believes no amount of preparation could have saved the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from the carnage.

“And even still, even with that, we still have 17 casualties, 17 people that aren’t going to return to their families. And to me, that’s totally unacceptable,” said Falkowski, as she choked back tears on national television. “From my personal viewpoint, it’s time for Congress, government, somebody, to do something. And it’s time to talk about what the problem is, and try to fix it.”

Cover image: "Victims" are led out as members of the Fountain Police Department take part in an Active Shooter Response Training exercise at Fountain Middle School on June 9, 2017, in Fountain, Colorado. (Dougal Brownlie/The Gazette via AP)