Yes, they could have gotten in 3 minutes after he started shooting people

And it would have saved a lot of lives

Cops who fail to go in against an active threat are guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around

You get the badge, and the respect, because of your willingness to risk your life.

If you’re not willing, get off the force

Did they ever do a drill completely unannounced, which nobody could tell from the real thing until it was over? Doing that with a fire drill is one thing. Allowing the staff and, depending on what the kids have been taught, to think there is an actual, armed murderer in the building until the all clear is sounded would be a pretty severe item to impose on people for whom peaceable routine defines their day.
“Okay, kids. It’s all over Was just practice Those of you with wet pants can….”

And if you don’t do that, expecting the teachers to have keys–and whatever else non-teacher protocol writers can think of–immediately to hand is a hope. And getting it right 99% of the time isn’t enough. We’re talking about people here, and people who aren’t cops or soldiers
Whatever the problem with the entry way door, it’s only somewhat relevant. The interest in it presumes that Ramos could not have gotten in any other way. Is there a loading/freight entrance? I suppose you could close that between deliveries. Could, as with Sandy Hook, one or another door or its sidelights simply be shot to pieces, thus allowing entry?
People go and out of the building. It would be useless if that were not possible and, as with Cruz at Parkland, somebody could just walk in.
Armed sercutiry is a good idea but they’re not likely to shoot first. The intruder’s shooting would be required to justify the guard’s shots. So we have dead and wounded anyway. But fewer.

Much as I dislike the camel’s nose issue with any gun control reg, getting the juvie records into a data base seems like a good idea, presuming P.R.O.M.I.S.E. allows for there being records in the first place. See Cruz at Parkland.

Nothing I’ve read or heard says “the classroom door though which the shooter first entered was locked by him.” I think we can assume it, though, because obviously the officers needed a key or other device to get in there – I think that much is pretty clear (although it would be nice to get a simple direct statement about it). Assuming the perp locked it, I think my comment at 10:19 above indicates that Ramos probably knew about the key – and I think it would have even been in the hand of the teacher he killed – and knew enough to use it to lock the door. He would have known that probably from previous experience in a school or schools with classroom doors that worked that way, and from previous practice lockdowns.

I also believe – if you see my comment above at 9:02 PM – that the door to the second classroom was locked and so he didn’t have to lock it. He entered that classroom from the first one, through the adjoining unlocked door.

I could be wrong about all of this. But that’s the way I’ve reconstructed it so far, based on interviews, articles, and logic. I’d love to see something that directly addresses it.

One of the things I learned from my research about locking classroom doors – and which I plan to put in my post about that – is that this type of door that can be locked with a key from inside has been the standard for many classroom doors for about 10 years now, ever since Sandy Hook. They were recommended based on what happened at Sandy Hook. It’s a long story why it’s done that way. But Ramos was 18 years old and he’d probably been in many classrooms that had doors that had keys like that which could be locked from the inside with the key.

In addition, lockdown rehearsals are common in recent years. I’ve heard they’re quite common in border towns such as Uvalde. Someone of his age would be expected to know how those doors worked, from past experience as a student.

So I think the “coefficient of likely” actually might be very stout.

I have helped out in a hunger program which, among other things, delivers food to el ed students qualified for low or no cost lunch, extra to get them through the weekend. So I’m wandering around a school built sixty-three years ago. Some of the classrooms are connected and were at time of construction. I went to el ed about the same time in two schools whose classrooms at the time were not connected. Might they be now? No idea. Such connections as I have seen are considerably less stout than the classroom doors. So, at least, that is almost certainly true.

So if the teacher was killed before got the door locked, how did the shooter lock the door? We have to assume that the key was on the teacher, near the door or in the lock when the shooter entered the room. We may never know how the shooter found the key, but obviously he locked the door.

Please see my comment right above yours. It also deals with the question of the delay in locking the classroom door.

Also –

At this point, I see some of these discussions as dealing with several connected but actually separate issues.
(1) clarity on what actually happened
(2) what was possible to do and wasn’t done in terms of security prior to the incident, and why
(3) what was possible to do and wasn’t done in terms of officers reacting to the incident
(4) would any of it have actually mattered to the outcome?
(5) would any of it have made things worse?