A Central Texas school district is using decommissioned fire hoses to increase safety in the classroom.
Midway High School ISD agriculture science teachers like Shawn Rejcek are making sleeves out of old fire hoses, which are then put into doors with scissor-action arms.
The sleeves prevent the door from being opened, which can be useful in situations with an intruder trying to gain access to the classroom.
"There's no perfect cure to take care of this as far as this, but we can do is add layers of security. When you are talking about doing something that can be done to little or no cost, if you can get some volunteers," Rejcek said.
Waco, Hewitt, Woodway and Hillsboro Fire Departments donated the old fire hoses to the district.
"It's a layer of security that when coupled with the door lock and barricading the door, if necessary. All of those things will add critical time for first responders," Rejcek said.
Midway High School's school resource officer Kelly Painter said it can also be helpful if one of those safety measures doesn't work.
"In the instance, the door handle or the door lock is defeated, that is going to slow down any intruder and keep them from gaining access into a classroom," Painter said.
Painter brought the idea of the safety sleeves to Midway administrators after another school resource officer told him about seeing it online.
"For what this was to what it is, it still has a great use. Hopefully, in the future we will save lives," Painter said.
Midway ISD High School junior Austin Young likes the Blue Heart Project.
"It will 100 percent make me feel a lot safer, considering that is pretty much unbreakable," Young said.
Midway plans to make enough sleeves for the rooms in the district that have a specific type of door closer. In addition, they intend to create more of those tools to offer for other districts in the area.
Rejcek shared a video on his personal Facebook about the idea and in four days, it had more than 9,000 views.
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