Since getting Mint Mobile…
When last we left I had just decided to get Mint Mobile for my daughter’s phone in the event she needed to contact us… let’s see how that’s going…
TL;DR – this is not about Mint’s service, just about how the school system has necessitated an unexpected policy change on my kid’s phone.
Day 1 of Mint we left 10yo at the house to go party at a grocery store one mile away. We left her with barely anything to do, just a TV with infinite options, every toy she’s ever owned, an armed security system, two guard kittens, and we set off for our glamourous shopping trip. Got a text 15 minutes into our Aldi adventure wondering when we were coming home as she was bored with the universe and had finished homework.
The plan was should there ever be a time where we were separated or the schedule was going to be different, the Mint Mobile enabled phone would be deployed, but not for general deployment.
Day 2 I believe nothing happened.
Day 3 was set to be a normal day, she went off to school on a Monday, leaving her phone at home, and I was going to pick her up at 3 as usual. She didn’t have the phone because nothing strange was planned.
That’s when some kid flashed another kid a firearm magazine / implied the rest was with them. An adult and multiple students supposedly saw this and the school went into immediate lockdown. I received no phone call, text alert on this. Instead I got an email from MNPS saying there was a lockdown at 1:18, actually the email reading it now says that firearm magazine flashed and that the student was searched. Nowhere does it say they were in lockdown.
I go to pick up my kid at 3 and am wondering why the line is not only out the pickup area but down the street and parents are parking on the street and running to the school. There’re police everywhere. It takes me until 3:20 to get into the pickup area. My kid is sitting behind two police cars and in front of another.
She got into the car and said “dad, what the hell happened today?” and I not knowing she was asking about the event that supposedly was done at 1:18 said there was just a long line so it took a while to get to the front.
Nope, what had happened was the school locked down sometime around lunch. No notification was sent out that the school was on lockdown. And my kid was locked in a school room not knowing what was going on with a group similarly not knowing anything. The teacher didn’t know, the kids didn’t know. One of the kids got under a desk and my kid joined her.
I suspect the kid who got under the desk is her friend who’s friend died at the Covenant school shooting. Oof. Maggie said she wasn’t particularly afraid but nothing happened for what seemed like a couple of hours. Just locked in a room not knowing anything next to a scared friend.
Meanwhile I’m sitting with a plumber and an email that says the kid who flashed the firearm magazine was talked to by the police and action was being taken. No idea that my kid and another and her classmates are in a room not knowing that nothing actually is happening.
When the doors were opened, heavily armed police lined the halls… I’m not sure how heavily armed but it sounded a wee bit like bullet proof vests, and weapons that were not sidearms. Then again my kid is 10 and we haven’t covered how to identify what level of threat an officer is ready for. Could have been holding tactical kittens of walkie talkies from the descriptions I got.
She had been in a closed room with her friend under a table for over and hour and then waiting for me in what appeared to be a crime scene. Oof.
Day 4 (today) as we are driving into school I had a conversation with her that we were going to send her into school with a phone in the future. It wasn’t going to be today because I want to make sure I can get it to not make a single bit of noise during school hours, and I wanted it to not display any of her game notifications because I didn’t want her getting distracted, and basically I wanted between the hours of 8 and 3 for it to be nothing more than an emergency phone which she could use to contact us, 911, or in extreme emergency bypass any of my lockouts and do whatever she needed to.
I mean, there was no rush… what were the chances that someone will do something like bring a gun to school again?
I drop her off at about 8am, take a leisurely drive to work… there’s nothing going on for the next two days that I can’t handle from home but I’m going in to move a few boxes and get a project space ready… I stop by the Taco Bell for ADEQUATE BREAKFAST and after that I was working testing out a supposedly bad router (which seems perfectly fine,) when I get an email and a call that my kid’s school is on lockout.
Lockout is different than lockdown because that means the school is essentially a fortress with the gate closed. Nobody comes in or out. The threat is exterior, but I won’t know what the interior results are until later. I do know that police swarmed the school areas as one of my friends said the area was covered in cops. At least three schools were locked down that we know of for a threat.
I got a text shortly after from my wife saying Maggie’s phone is going with her to school from now on.
Hey Ryan Reynolds, can you work on stopping school shootings next? Love what you did with Mint. Thanks.
From the school dance that started this all to today – 11 days.
