BPS doing active-shooter drills with teachers; but city councilor says needles are a more immediate threat

City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George said today that, like school districts across the country, BPS has been conducting drills with teachers on what to do should a shooter enter a local school. But, she said at a City Council meeting today, local teachers aren't getting shot with pellet guns.

Boston's drills "are a lot less intense," she said, during a review of school-safety efforts, which include everything from training to ensuring all classrooms have doors that can actually be locked.

But while preparing for a mass murderer is important, "kids are getting pricked with needles," she said, pointing to the news that two girls in Arlington were pricked by needles. She noted the outrage by parents at the Orchard Gardens School in Roxbury, where a student got pricked last fall and where daily patrols by school custodians and others have not seemed to dent a daily deluge of freshly used needles.