BOOTHBAY HARBOR — Boothbay’s elementary and high schools will soon be among the first in Maine with bullet-resistant body shields in every classroom.

The town’s police department on Wednesday handed out 105 bulletproof backpacks to teachers at the town’s regional schools. One bag will be placed in each classroom by the end of the week, according to Boothbay Harbor Police Chief Doug Snyder.

Inside each bag are three protective plates: One designed to stop bullets, one made to block knives and another to absorb the impact from a physical blow, like a punch.

Schools across the U.S. have been handing out bulletproof backpacks to students since at least 2018, one of several responses to school shootings that have become disturbingly prevalent.

But Boothbay might be the first in Maine. The Maine Department of Education said it does not collect information about such safety initiatives in the state.

Shawna Kurr, principal of the Boothbay Region Elementary School, said the bags are part of the school’s broader safety plan. Both students and staff will receive training on how to utilize the shields, she said, similar to a fire or lockout drill.

“The goal is to provide our school with an added layer of protection and a tool that can be used for shielding or even breaking glass to exit a room if necessary,” Kurr wrote in an email.

Administrators said they plan to place the school’s “go bags” (emergency kits with medical and first aid supplies) into the backpacks.

The bags were not purchased in response to any specific incident or threat against students, according to Kurr, and there is currently no plan to purchase more of them for the schools. The other schools in the AOS98 district, the Lincoln County towns of Georgetown, Edgecomb and Southport, are not included.

Snyder, however, said he planned to buy one of the bags for each of Boothbay’s police officers.

The backpacks are made by Mundbora, a Houlton-based company that exclusively produces bulletproof bags. According to the company’s website, the backpacks are handcrafted by members of northern Maine’s Amish community.

Snyder said the partnership came about last November after he saw a presentation on the company’s bags.

Mundbora’s cheapest bulletproof backpack retails for $125 and does not include the bullet- and knife-proof inserts. The backpacks offered to Boothbay cost $225 a piece — money that Snyder said came in the form of a roughly $23,000 grant from an anonymous source.

Jeffrey Maguire, owner and founder of Mundbora, said the company offered the schools a discounted rate for the bags and said the Boothbay schools are the first in Maine or elsewhere to purchase in bulk, he said.

“My goal is to put as many of these bags in as many schools in Maine as we can,” Maguire said Wednesday.

Whether any other districts will be interested is unclear, and questions remain about the efficacy of bulletproof bags and shields during school shootings.

As gun violence in American schools has risen over the last 10 years, a roughly $4 billion industry has propped itself up around selling bulletproof products to students and teachers. While Mundbora only offers backpacks, other companies are producing bullet-resistant school supplies ranging from binders to desks.

The National Institute of Justice, a federal agency that researches the effectiveness of law enforcement-related products, has said it does not test bulletproof backpacks and therefore cannot recommend them. Some companies, including one that sold “bulletproof” glass to schools, have been found to be misrepresenting the efficacy of their products.

Maguire said Mundbora’s bags have been tested, though not by the NIJ, and are indeed bullet resistant — but only to small caliber handgun bullets, not high-powered assault rifles.

Snyder, the police chief, said the bags aren’t intended to be the only thing standing between Boothbay students and a serious incident at school. Rather, they are meant to be one part of the schools’ emergency response.

“Think of these almost as a fire extinguisher or smoke alarm,” Snyder said. “They’re there just in case.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 11 to correct the Boothbay Harbor police chief’s first name.