Faced with questions about school safety following the shooting in parkland, Florida, Tooele County School District officials said they will continue to emphasize mental health and standard safety protocols while exploring new ways to improve building security.
The school district held a community meeting Monday night in the school board’s chambers to discuss the district’s safety protocols. School district officials, representatives of local law enforcement agencies, and Tooele County Department of Emergency Management officials took part in the meeting, discussing safety policies and procedures and answering questions that had been submitted online prior to the meeting.
One of the questions submitted asked, “What would it take to put a trained police officer in every school?”
Tooele County School District Superintendent Scott Rogers said the district pays around $65,000 for each school resource officer.
“I’m not sure what expenses the agency pays, but for the school district that would be $65,000 times 26 schools,” he said.
But from the back of the room Tooele County Sheriff Paul wimmer raised his hand.
“I know [the answer],” Wimmer said. “It would be around $3.6 million. I happen to have a force of 26 deputies and that’s how much it costs. You would be talking about hiring enough officers to have your own law enforcement agency for the school district.”
Rogers also said that the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss the pros and cons of gun controls or arming teachers.
“The state already allows teachers that have a concealed weapon permit to carry a weapon while at school,” Rogers said.
State law does not allow school administrators to ask teachers if they are carrying a weapon, he said. State law and school policy requires a concealed carry permit holder to keep their weapon concealed.
“School safety is about more than shooting,” Rogers said. “It is a complex issue. There isn’t a magic pill or a single answer. We’re here to talk about what we are doing to keep kids safe.”
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the prevalence of mental health problems in the general population is roughly 20 percent, said Rogers, who worked as a psychologist before becoming a school administrator.
“For Tooele County School District with 16,200 students that means there may be up to 3,240 students with some kind of diagnosable mental condition or disorder,” he said.
In 2014 the school district received a five-year school climate grant from the U.S. Department of Education totaling $5 million.
Part of the grant has been used to pay for professional mental health services for students.
In the 2014-15 school year, the first year of the grant, the school district paid for mental health services for 120 students.
During the current school year, the district has paid for mental health services for 220 students so far, Rogers said.
In addition to mental health services, the grant has helped the district place counselors in elementary schools, implement a kindergarten through eighth grade curriculum that teaches prosocial behavior, purchase a software program to track and analyze reports of behavioral problems, and hire two safe school coordinators who provide training for teachers, students, and parents along with helping monitor school safety issues.
Dolene Pitt, Tooele County School District assistant superintendent, described the role of the school district’s case management team in school safety.
The case management team is a multi-disciplinary group of school administrators, psychologists, and teachers that review cases involving students who have been suspended for more than 10 days before the student is readmitted to school.
“This means it’s not just one person making a decision, but a whole team,” she said.
If the student has been a threat to school safety, a risk assessment is performed and the student is not admitted back to school until any required intervention is completed and a plan has been made to keep students safe, according to Pitt.
Pitt also reviewed the four standard security protocols that the school district has developed in conjunction with its law enforcement and emergency management partners.
Those protocols are Lockout, Lockdown, Evacuate and Shelter.
Lockout is used when there is a threat outside the school building. All students are brought into the building and accounted for in their classroom. Perimeter doors are locked and business continues as usual in classrooms.
A lockdown is generally a response to a threat inside a school building. Classroom doors are locked, lights are turned off, and teachers and students move away from sight and remain quiet.
Under an evacuation order, students would grab their cell phones but leave other personal belongings behind and follow their teachers to a predetermined evacuation location where students are accounted for.
A shelter response is usually the result of a disaster or extreme weather conditions. Students return to their classroom. Doors and windows are shut and the class follows instructions specific to the threat.
The district schedules monthly drills. Each building administrator is required to report completion of the drills to the district office, according to Pitt.
“The drills help both students and our staff know how to respond to these different types of emergencies,” Pitt said.
In addition to an emphasis on mental health and response drills, the school district is looking at a variety of safety strategies to improve building security.
Balancing the need to restrict access to buildings for safety, while allowing for quick egress from a building when evacuation is needed, can be tricky, according to Steve West, Tooele County School District director of operations.
“Our new schools, Sterling and Old Mill Elementary schools, have single-point access where exterior doors are kept locked,” West said. “Visitors enter through the front door, register at the office, and then given access to the interior hallways.”
The district is also looking at the the possibility of retrofitting older schools to a similar technology, he said.
Single-point entry may work well in elementary schools, but implementing it in larger secondary schools with multiple entry ways and multiple buildings is more difficult, according to Rogers.
“But that doesn’t mean we aren’t looking at it,” he said.
The district is also considering the use of metal detectors, but they also have problems, according to West.
“As long as you have a building where a student can use an accomplice and open an outside door once they are inside, a metal detector is not 100-percent effective,” he said.
West said the district is looking at updating school intercom systems to allow for a panic-like button in classrooms, allow for surreptitious monitoring of classrooms, and improving communications with parents.
The district will also use the former Harris Elementary school to test various aftermarket devices available to secure classrooms doors.
“We don’t want to create a situation where students are trapped inside a room,” West said.
The district has security cameras in most schools and is working toward installing cameras in all schools, West said.
Currently those cameras can be accessed in the school building and by a handful of district employees over the internet.
“We are working on giving law enforcement remote access to those security cameras,” West said.
Rogers described a new computerized visitor and volunteer management system that the district is looking at piloting in three schools this spring with a goal of expanding the system to all schools in the fall of 2018.
The new system scans all school visitor’s driver’s licenses. The system checks the driver’s license against a national database of people, who for various reasons, should not have access to children. If the person is cleared, the system would print out a visitor’s badge. If access is denied, the person would be provided with a phone number to call to clear up the reason for the denial.
“The access system is not designed to keep shooters out of schools,” Rogers said. “We don’t expect shooters to stop and register at the office. It will help keep people that shouldn’t have access to children away from our students. Our current background check system only checks records in seven surrounding states.”
Rogers said school safety encompasses the district’s entire efforts to make schools a safe place including anti-bullying efforts, suicide prevention, truancy, positive behavior interventions, counseling, anti-pornography education, and other efforts.
“We need to make sure that kids are fully connected,” Rogers said.