The challenge for schools is how far to go on a continuum with tons of options. More locks? More cameras? More guards? More drills? Adding metal detectors? Arming school staff? There’s no way to make everyone happy, as there are parents who support and oppose each of those steps.
“It’s a tough spot for schools and it comes down to one word — reasonableness. What is reasonable to reduce risk?” said Ken Trump, a national school safety consultant. “The majority of parents want safe schools, want risks reduced, want genuine preparedness.
“But they also want that to be balanced with a climate supportive of students, not a prison-like environment.”
But Sheriff Richard K. Jones said districts’ school boards and superintendents need to do as much as possible to implement something he’s been advocating since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012: arming administrators and stationing former armed forces or law enforcement personnel in classrooms as substitute teachers. Failure to do so means put a district in peril, he said.
“If you look at what I stated back then, I said it’s not a matter of it’s not going to happen, it’s when it’s going to happen. Well, it has,” he said. “These days and times you need to have either an armed officer or someone in that school with a weapon. Period.”
Jones said Madison Local School District putting school resource officers following Sandy Hook meant having someone who could respond to last Monday’s shooting seconds after it occurred.
“He was back chasing the suspect, calling it out on the radio,” Jones said of SRO Kent Hall. “Could have been a totally different scenario if he hadn’t been there.”
That also meant the school resource officer was the first call to reach dispatch, providing a detailed description of the suspect and where he was headed as deputies responded to the scene.
Having an SRO in schools also means districts know who to go to when it comes to reporting suspicious behavior or objects.
School boards in other Butler County districts, need to do what’s necessary to protect students, especially in districts without a school resource officer. Jones said he wouldn’t say which districts have failed to hire an SRO because doing so would potentially make that district a target. He did, however, criticize districts that haven’t yet put any such security measure in place.
“If the school boards tell you that their schools are as safe as they can be, and they don’t have armed officers in that school, they’re lying to you,” he said. “If you choose as a school board not to have an armed officer or someone trained in the school administration, you’re not doing your responsibility, you’re not doing it correctly.”
Jones said some school boards are afraid to make decisions and instead pay “lip service” to school security in the immediate few weeks following a nationally publicized incident but eventually end up doing nothing.
“They don’t want to spend the money, and they don’t want to be the first ones to do it, and they don’t like controversy,” he said. “They fear for their elected jobs, but … if these school boards don’t want to do that, they don’t feel that they need armed employees or officers in the school, that’s on them.”
Jones suggested that school districts that remain inert when it comes to school safety can be replaced by voters and that superintendents who don’t work toward school safety can be replaced by school boards.
For districts that can’t afford hiring SROs, Jones maintains his initial suggestion of hiring retired law enforcement personnel to work in the school as armed substitute teachers or to allow certain administrators — if properly trained — to carry guns in schools.
That’s the policy adopted unanimously by the school board of Edgewood City Schools in 2013. Reached this week, school officials there said they have two school resource officers between five different buildings, three of which are on the same campus, but would not discuss any aspect of their armed administrators program.
“We keep that to ourselves,” said Gary Gabbard, vice president of the district’s school board. “We don’t necessarily want an intruder to know who or who doesn’t (carry a weapon).”
Gabbard said the district, in its efforts to do “everything humanly possible” to keep its 3,600 students safe, looks at additional measures on a daily basis no matter what the expense.
“If you’re talking about a student’s safety, there’s no price you can put on it,” he said.
The Journal-News asked parents for their opinions on school safety, with many advocating for metal detectors in schools.
Kim Swafford of Oxford said she favored the measure because “when you go to the old Butler County courthouse, you go through a detector. Why is their protection more important than our little children?”
Michelle Wells of Madison Twp., a Miami University criminal justice major, said metal detectors would be a welcome addition despite some parents’ protests that it would make a school resemble a prison.
“My daughter said she wouldn’t feel like she was in prison, that she would feel safer having them because once they’re in the building, they don’t really go out of the building that much,” Wells said.
Kevin Prater of Middletown said he opposes arming administrators because “no one can shoot in (a) room full of kids” and that he also opposes metal detectors.
“I don’t want my kids to walk through one just to go to school,” Prater said via Facebook.
Madison Schools Superintendent Curtis Philpot was asked whether the district is considering metal detectors to deter anyone from bringing a gun to school. He said that’s a conversation for down the road, not this week. Then he added: “We are not going to rule anything out at this point. I don’t know if that’s the answer.”
Last week, the security presence at the school increased from one SRO to four Butler County Sheriff’s Office deputies. Philpot wasn’t sure how long the four deputies would remain on campus.
Philpot said on Tuesday, the day after the shooting, there was debate among school officials about searching the backpacks of every student. But in the end, he decided he didn’t want to take that step.
“Our kids’ reality has changed and that hurts, so we got to do everything in our power to counteract that,” Philpot said. “Metal detectors won’t keep guns out of schools. Armed guards won’t keep guns out of schools.”
Middletown City School District, which this week saw the arrest of a student for having a loaded gun thanks to another student informing school administrators, who alerted the SRO.
Superintendent Sam Ison said the district’s principals and other administrators receive refreshers on planning, communication procedures and staff awareness.
“They were offered A.L.I.C.E training (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate),” Ison said. “District Business Manager George Long has reviewed building plans with our school resource officers and met with school staff to process and make appropriate changes.”
Franklin City Schools Board of Education held a safety/security update meeting last November, according to longtime board member Lori Raleigh, who served as the 2015 board president.
In the wake of the Madison shooting incident, Raleigh said the board is meeting in executive session to review the district’s safety/security plan.
“We wanted to reaffirm to the community that we are on top of this (by meeting on Monday),” she said. “It’s good to reassess our plan and hopefully if we were to put in that situation we would do as well. Nothing is more important than our kids’ safety.”
State oversight
Damon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association, urged districts to work with parents and local safety officials to review potential threats and all security options before settling on a plan that fits their community. He issued a warning as well.
“There’s just no sure-fire formula to say, well, if we do these things, we’ll be safe,” Asbury said.
The Ohio Department of Homeland Security reviews school safety plans, and spokesman Dustyn Fox said the agency speaks up if plans are lacking. He also encouraged parents to get involved in their school’s process.
Trump said the best line of defense is a well-trained, highly alert staff and student body, so schools should not be lulled into complacency by locked doors, metal detectors and other security hardware.
He said schools can improve their readiness by adding wrinkles to their drills — blocking an exit that students would normally use, taking teachers out of the mix, or having a safety exercise at lunch or change of classes, so students have to think on their feet.
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©2016 the Journal-News (Hamilton, Ohio)
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