By Michael D. Clark
The Cincinnati Enquirer

LOVELAND - When it comes to keeping Greater Cincinnati students safe in school, there are two schools of thought. Cops and cameras.

In some schools, cameras zoom in on students and relay images to banks of TV security monitors. Empty hallways are bathed in invisible waves from motion detectors. Doors and windows are electronically monitored. Nobody gets in without a pass or a code, and employees wear photo IDs.

Then there is Fred Barnes.

Or "Officer Barnes," as he is known by the students, teachers and staff he watches over at Loveland Schools.

While Loveland employs electronic surveillance tools, school officials believe their best deterrent to violence is a specially trained law enforcement officer.

"Cameras are great and motion detectors are great but here we also rely on people. The bottom line is maintaining security," said Barnes, who last year was chosen from among more than 600 school resource officers (SRO) as Ohio School Officer of the Year.

He is one of two SROs who patrol Loveland's 4,240-student district.

Second-year Loveland Superintendent Kevin Boys, a veteran of more than two decades in Greater Cincinnati school administration, rates Barnes ahead of technology in keeping his students safe.

"Once you've had an experienced SRO like Fred you never want to operate a school again without one," said Boys, whose district's veteran administrators say they can't recall major violence in their schools.

But some Greater Cincinnati schools, especially those in well-financed suburban districts with newer buildings, are leaning increasingly toward high-tech security.

• Mason's high school, which opened last year, has 66 security cameras and electronic monitors on its doors. Since 9-11, all visitors during higher national security alerts must leave a driver's license or photo ID at the front desk in exchange for a visitor's badge.

• Lebanon's new K-12 school will have 100 cameras inside and outside when it opens in fall 2004. Access is controlled through one main entrance, and elementary play areas are smaller so students can be more closely monitored.

• By Jan. 1, all of Cincinnati Public Schools' 6,600 employees will be required to wear photo identity badges.

"Columbine was the watershed event," said Boys, referring to the 1999 Colorado school shootings.

While the chances of a student being killed at school are less than one in a million according to the U.S. Department of Education, national surveys show parents continue to push school officials to improve security.

About 22 percent of parents said they fear their child will be stabbed or shot while at school. Meanwhile, 24 percent said their child had witnessed an incident of school violence that year, according to a 2001 survey by the Youth Crime Watch of America.. At Loveland, Barnes carries a loaded handgun, stun stick and chemical Mace. He stays in constant contact with Loveland police via walkie-talkie.

Still, his role in schools extends well beyond that of an armed guard. The veteran policeman trains Loveland teachers, staff and students to expect the unexpected. He provides demonstrations and secretly arranges for impostors posing as possible intruders to try to enter the schools to test response.

"He seems to be everywhere all the time," marvels Loveland Middle School Principal Erica Kramer. "He is really part of our team when dealing with students and their problems."

But Mason High School Assistant Principal George Coates speaks equally glowingly while gazing at a bank of TV monitors that show what 66 security cameras are seeing.

"We're looking at students all the time," said Coates from the security control room of Mason's high-tech surveillance system.

Classrooms are not scanned, nor locker rooms and restrooms for privacy reasons, but each has cameras focused on its doorways to document anyone going in or out. Digital images, stored directly in the security computer's mainframe, can be used to identify offending students or cars on school grounds.

A year ago, Mason's outside cameras captured a vehicle ripping up the football field at Dwire Stadium.Police charged a student in the vandalism.

If a student tries to exit the school during the day, an alarm is tripped. "We can call immediately home and let their parents know their son or daughter has left the building," Coates said.

A minor downside for students, said Mason Junior Justin Henry, is that some relatively harmless school pranks don't happen when students know the cameras are always rolling. Times changed

Ask Dan Sullivan, Newport Schools superintendent, what he prefers: police officers or technology. "I'm glad we have both."

"Back when I started teaching 47 years ago, I never envisioned that I would see the day with police officers in school buildings and all the doors locked. But people are crazier than they have ever been and the presence of SROs ... and their ability to work with kids and their issues has been a major deterrent to problems," said the superintendent of the 2,300-student school system.

Sullivan said Greater Cincinnati school systems have a healthy balance between officers and machinery.

Cincinnati Public Schools, with 40,347 students, employs hundreds of cameras but also 13 SROs in its high schools along with 136 security assistants who, in an emergency, can immediately comprise up to 12 "Response Teams" to react to problems at the district's 79 school buildings.

Loveland eighth-grader Brie Elking isn't interested in her school becoming like a prison and said she appreciates officer Barnes' low-key but thorough approach. She can't help but smile when talking about him.

"He's always joking around with you," she said. "We see him as a friend."

School safety

From 1992 to 2000, 269 students were killed on the nation's school grounds. Of those, 207 were killed by guns; 37 by knives; and the rest dying from other causes, including accidents, according to a study by the National School Safety Center.

While deadly violence in American schools is rare, attacks, thefts and property crimes continue to plague some schools. Greater Cincinnati's most notable school violence in recent years occurred in 1994 in suburban Union, Ky., where 17-year-old Clay Shrout killed his parents and two sisters before briefly holding 22 students at gunpoint in his Ryle High School trigonometry class. They were released unharmed.

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E-mail mclark@enquirer.com