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State lawmaker wants Georgia schools to conduct intruder drills

ATLANTA — A state lawmaker wants every school in Georgia to conduct intruder drills so they’ll be prepared should an intruder try and get into their building.

Channel 2′s Richard Elliot was live at the state capitol with how some high schoolers think this is a great idea, even if it’s a little bit scary.

Intruders in schools are scary to students and their parents.

This bill would require schools to file a safety plan with the state and conduct those drills.

Some students we talked to today wish they didn’t have to do that but would feel better if they did.

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Tiffany Harding’s class from Lincoln County High School visited the state capitol Wednesday, just in time to learn about a new bill that would require all Georgia schools to conduct intruder drills to prepare for a day they all hope never comes.

“I feel like we could use more drills so we could be actively prepared in case something were to happen,” Harding said.

Dawsonville Republican lawmaker Will Wade is sponsoring this bill.

“This is going to help encourage schools to update their school safety plan,” Wade said.

He said it would require all Georgia public schools to file a school safety plan not just with local law enforcement but with GEMA-homeland security, too.

It would also allow GEMA to help build and update those plans for smaller school districts.

It would require all schools to conduct intruder drills…in addition to their fire and tornado drills.

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He wishes this wasn’t something Georgia needed to do, but given the image from Uvalde, Texas and other places of school shootings, he feels it has to.

“We have to make sure that we continue to have thoughtful but relevant measures to protect our students and our faculty so that when they’re in that capsule of education, they don’t have to worry about outside threats,” Wade said.

Harding’s student Mariah Cross says she worries about safety in school all the time and thinks any measure to make them feel safer is a good one.

“I think it’s very safe because it proves that they care about our safety,” Cross said.

On Wednesday, the bill passed out of the house committee, meaning

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