In light of recent school shootings in Newton County and throughout the state of Texas, local school districts are making efforts to ensure a safe learning environment for all students.
As reported by The Star-Herald last week, there were two incidents at McAdams High School where students brought weapons onto school grounds. The district is adding an additional school resource officer to patrol Long Creek Elementary and McAdams in response.
Attala County School District Superintendent Kyle Hammond said that establishing trusting relationships between administration, parents, students, and staff is the main deterrent to preventing violence at school.
“Most of these things occur from the building of relationships we have with students, and having that relationship open enough with adults to tell them if something is going on with another student,” said Hammond.
He added that when treading a line between students’ safety and privacy, the last thing anyone wants is to turn a school into a prison. Hammond declined to get into specifics regarding lockdown procedures in order not to give away pertinent information related to school security, but he spoke about the importance of maintaining trust between students, teachers, and staff.
“The biggest deterrent you have is to start building relationships. I’ve been around schools long enough to know that you can't encase students like a prison,” he said. “There are walls around a prison and guards at prison gates. There are metal detectors everywhere, and they still get stuff in. You don’t want your school to be a prison, and you literally can’t do it. So, the biggest thing to do is to build those relationships.”
Hammond added that there are counselors and psychologists within the school district that directly work with and actively build relationships with students. The district school resource officers start working with students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades teaching them about gun violence.
A clear or mesh backpack policy could be brought before the school board after this year, but no policy will be put into place this term, the superintendent said. Hammond said the district is currently looking at purchasing metal detector wands.
“This is one more tool for us to utilize looking for any type of contraband,” he said.
Hammond was a teacher at Pearl Junior High School in 1997 when a school shooting took the lives of two students and injured seven others at Pearl High School. He said after that incident, school offiicials everywhere began realizing the importance of maintaining personal relationships with students and the responsibility of all parties to report any wrongdoing they observe. Many districts also began adding school resource officers to campuses.
Kosciusko Superintendent Billy Ellzey echoed Hammond’s message that building relationships is the most effective strategy to protect everyone. He said the district did a security upgrade project four years ago that implemented card readers on school buildings that prevent unauthorized outsiders from entering school facilities.
“One thing about our lockdown procedure is all the schools have a lockdown button where even I can't get it into the school once they lock it down. Nobody can get access, so that's really good,” he said. “And we have an anonymous tip line to report any suspicion of those kinds of things. Mainly we try to build relationships with kids and try to have an understanding of helping and protecting each other.”
Kosciusko Police Captain Mark Gilmore serves as the school resource officer for the Kosciusko School District and conducts Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) training with elementary students. Ellzey said Gilmore is highly experienced in the DARE program and even trains other officers. The superintendent added that the district has a policy in place to investigate any bullying incidents.
“We're watching out for those kinds of things that would lead to something dangerous, but it’s about making sure that we have relationships where the kids will talk to us and let us know something's going on,” he said.
He said that being observant and having open conversations are two of the best ways to know what is going on among students. And each student has someone they can trust at school.
“They all have somebody they trust at the school. Somebody trusts this teacher; one may trust the counselor,” said Ellzey. “They all have somebody they trust, and then we can talk to those folks when there's a possibility of something happening.”
According to reports from Education Week, an independent news organization covering K-12 education since 1981, there have been 23 school shootings this year, with 15 of those occurring since Aug. 1. Most recently, a female student was shot and injured at a high school football game in Winnie, Texas, on Oct. 7.
