Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Tristate educators: No school is completely safe
BY PERRY BROTHERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
This time it was in Colorado. Last time in Oregon. Many Tristate school district superintendents know the next schoolhouse massacre could be anywhere. Even here.
“There isn't a child or parent in America who will leave for school tomorrow without — somewhere, in the back of their mind — an element of concern,” said Garth Errington, superintendent of the Norwood City School District.
“Nowhere, in any school today, can it be said that every child is completely safe.'
As many as 25 people were killed Tuesday at Columbine High School in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo.
In response to the nation's latest school shooting, some Tristate administrators said schools need more security: armed guards, metal detectors, security cameras. Others said there's no way to secure a school 100 percent from these types of bloody attacks on schoolchildren.
“I think you can minimize it, I don't think you can say that it will never happen. I think about the nation's Capitol and the security measures that they have there,” said Barbara Hammel, superinten dent of Deer Park Community School District, referring to gunman who shot two police officers last year at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
“It can happen in that setting.”
At Mason High School, district leaders already were planning an overhaul of its security plans. The tremendous growth in the district dictated the need to re-evaluate current procedures, Principal Chuck Mason said.
The school restricts access during the school day, has an armed Mason police officer on patrol at the high school and aides roaming the building. The district also is installing a video security system throughout the school, Mr. Mason said.
“The biggest thing is that the kids need to feel safe in
your building. The staff needs to feel safe. And parents need to feel safe sending their kids there,” Mr. Mason said.
“This is Mason. I imagine Littleton, Colo., may be a lot like Mason.”
Besides the locked doors and armed officer, the district also looks for ways to avoid violent situations. It has signed onto the Safe School Helpline system in Warren County and stresses with students they must respect diversity, he said.
Several schools have signed up with school help lines that allows parents and students to tip administrators off to suspicious behavior or threats.
Since Kings Local School District signed onto the Safe School Helpline last year, it has taken two or three calls. None of them was serious to the extent that guns were involved, Superintendent Dave Query said.
While he feels they are providing a safe environment for students, staff cannot let its guard down, he said. Teachers are instructed to look out for students with behavior changes and problems. Visitors must register at the office.
The school created a security policy, though many of the ideas were already in place, after a student went into a shooting rampage on Dec. 1, 1997, at a school in Paducah, Ky.
Bryan Blavatt, superintendent of Boone County Schools, said teachers and administrators will be prepared today to provide an avenue of discussion for students who need to talk about the shootings.
“You've got to establish the atmosphere where kids feel free to tell you (teachers) what's going on,” said Mr. Blavatt, a board member of the National Alliance for Safe Schools. “The critical part of school safety is being proactive, not reactive.”
Being proactive to John Varis, superintendent of Reading Community City School District, means allowing armed guards into the schools.
“No one thinks twice of going into an upscale jewelry store and having an armed guard on the premises,” Mr. Varias said. “Why is it that we don't think twice about protecting gold and silver and jewelry, but people take issue with having armed guard protecting our children. To me kids are way more precious.”
In Cincinnati Public Schools, staff has made a concentrated effort since the early 1990s to improve security.
There are roving metal detectors in search of weapons, security patrols across campuses, cameras on buses and random searches, said Lynwood Battle Jr., CPS board president. The district has seen a dramatic drop in the number of weapons found in schools the past few years.
“The deterrents are working,” Mr. Battle said. Perhaps the biggest impact has been the stressing among staff that they must know and recognize the signs of behavior problems in their early stages, Mr. Battle said.
At Wyoming schools, there are no plans for metal detectors, Superintendent Ted Knapke said.
Existing security measures in place at the high school and middle schools require all visitors entering the building to go through the main office, Mr. Knapke said.
Even with metal detectors, it might still be possible for weapons to be smuggled into school building, Mr. Knapke said. The real problem is the proliferation of of handguns in the United States, he said.
“Why do we have unrestricted handgun access in this country?” Mr Knapke said. “Politically, we seem unable to deal with that.”
And determining which children will turn those guns on other students is difficult, if not impossible to predict, many school officials say.
“There's no profile that will predict that kind of behavior,” said Mr. Varis, superintendent of Reading schools. “You might walk in there and see a kid with a Mohawk. Last year, that was one of our honor roll students. You cannot judge a book by its cover.”
Michael Cline, superintendent of the Loveland City School District, was back in his office late Tuesday to meet with principals to craft a plan to deal with parent and student concerns today.
“As many of us, as adults, are shocked by this,” Mr. Cline said. “We will have many of our students coming in with the same unsettling feelings.”
Enquirer reporters Philip Pina, Earnest Winston and William A. Weathers contributed to this report.
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