New York Bans Active Shooter Drills That Use Props and Actors in Schools

The state is adding restrictions meant to make lockdown drills less scary for children, and will also require schools to notify parents about the exercises ahead of time.

The New York State Education Department is banning realistic active shooter drills in schools in an effort to make them less traumatic for students.

The state’s new rules call for a “trauma-informed” and “age-appropriate” approach to drills that excludes the use of any props, actors or tactics depicting violence when school or extracurricular activities are in session. The new rules also require schools to notify staff members and pupils about drills ahead of time. Parents are to be notified a week in advance.

The rules will take effect in the coming school year. New York schools — public and nonpublic — will still be required to conduct eight evacuation drills and four lockdown drills every year.

New York’s ban on realistic shooter drills comes as the United States is grappling with an ongoing epidemic of gun violence. There were at least 118 episodes involving gunfire on school grounds in 2024, according to data collected from news accounts by the group Everytown for Gun Safety. That number is about double what it was a decade ago.

Still, some researchers and activists in favor of restricting firearms say that drills can be harmful to children’s mental health. In New York, the way schools conduct lockdowns varies, and it is unclear how many districts use the sort of realistic role-playing cited in the new rules. But Dr. Ragy Girgis, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, said he worried that frequent drills of any kind might normalize violence.

In a typical lockdown drill, teachers lock doors and children hide in their classrooms, but some exercises include more elaborate scenarios involving law enforcement officers and people role-playing as gunmen and victims.