As we brace for ‘another challenging year of school safety,’ are your kids safe?
Many North Carolina public school students will return to class on Monday amid heightened fears sparked by last May’s mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Since January, there have been 27 school shootings across the nation, leaving 27 people dead and 56 injured, according to Education Week’s School Shooting Tracker. The shootings have led some North Carolina school systems to take steps such as incorporating assault rifles and body scanners as part of their security plans.
“Last year was a really rough year,” Ken Trump, a school safety consultant and president of National School Safety and Security Services, said in an interview. “Some of that you can attribute to the anxieties after returning from remote learning. But you can also expect it’s not easily going away.
“Just because we had a summer break doesn’t mean it will stop. We will have another challenging year of school safety.”
There’s potentially reason to be concerned. There were 254 “credible” threats of planned school attacks reported between Aug. 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022 on the state’s anonymous school safety tipline, The News & Observer previously reported.
But Karen Fairley, executive director of the North Carolina Center for Safer Schools, said she doesn’t have concerns that her grandchildren are unsafe in school.
“North Carolina’s schools are safe,” Fairley said in an interview. “Can I predict what’s going to happen? I cannot. You can’t predict what people’s thoughts are.
“But North Carolina’s schools have done a great job in catching up in areas that maybe were a little far behind in the comprehensive school safety plans.”
AR-15 rifles in schools
Buddy Harwell, the sheriff of Madison County, made national headlines with his plan to stock all public schools in the North Carolina mountain community with AR-15 rifles.
The Madison County school system has accepted the plan to have the rifles stored in gun safes that deputies can access in case a shooter comes on campus.
“We live in Western North Carolina, a rural county, but we’ve got to be prepared even in our rural counties for the enemy when he tries to come in and destroy our children,” Harwell said in a Facebook video announcing his plan.
Marshall, the county seat, is about 265 miles northwest of Raleigh and 150 miles northwest of Charlotte.
It’s not an idea, though, that’s caught on in the state’s other school systems.
Scanning for weapons
What’s gained more traction is the use of body scanners to screen for weapons on people entering schools.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system will install body scanners in its 48 middle schools, The Charlotte Observer previously reported. The scanners are already in place at the district’s 21 traditional high schools.
The scanners come after 23 guns were found on CMS campuses during the first four months of last school year.
Despite the growing popularity of the scanners, Triangle school officials said there are no plans to install them. Some districts, such as Durham and Johnston County, do use older-style metal detectors at athletic events.
‘Confidential’ safety plans
School districts are tight-lipped about what they are doing. School security plans are exempted from North Carolina’s public records laws.
“Through staff training, building improvements, and partnerships with law enforcement, Durham Public Schools prioritizes the safety and security of our students and staff,” the district said in a statement. “To support our efforts, we keep details of our security procedures and practices confidential.”
Similar statements have been made by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Johnston County and Wake County school systems about not wanting to say too much about their school safety “playbook.”
But in a message sent to families, the Wake school system said it’s working to make schools “safe places to learn.” The message points to the electronic security systems that are in place at most Wake schools.
Some security measures are public. The state is requiring every school district to adopt safety plans and to create threat assessment teams to identify at-risk students. The recently adopted state budget includes money for additional school safety equipment and to place more school resource officers at elementary schools.
School resource officers are more likely to be assigned to high schools and middle schools. Few elementary schools have armed officers on campus.
“There are some sheriff departments, police departments that just don’t have enough personnel to provide an SRO,” Fairley said. “They have just enough personnel to do what they regularly do as far as policing, and so that is a challenge.”
Avoiding ‘security theater’
Trump, the school safety consultant, said schools need to avoid relying too heavily on hardware that provides a false sense of security. He pointed to how federal Transportation Security Administration agents miss weapons at airports.
“Often times it becomes a case of security theater,” Trump said. “More security equipment that school administrators can point to to ease the pressure from parents.”
Trump says schools need to focus more on training employees. He said it’s the employees who can spot when something on campus doesn’t look right and can build trust with students so that threats are reported.
An outside safety audit of the Wake County school system recommended steps such as increasing training for school employees and standardizing how visitors are allowed on campuses.
Fairley said the Center for Safer Schools is providing additional safety training this year for schools.
Say Something
There are three ways to submit an anonymous tip about a safety concern with your school, according to the Say Something website:
▪ Submit a tip through the website: sandyhookpromise.org/say-something-tips.
▪ Call the 24/7 Crisis Hotline Counselors at 1-844-5-SayNow.
▪ Download the mobile app and submit your tip through it.
This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
