School board reviews safety in Wenatchee

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School board reviews safety in Wenatchee

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

WENATCHEE — Last month’s school massacre in a small Connecticut town 2,800 miles from here has local school districts questioning if they’re doing enough to keep students and staff safe from deranged gunmen.

The Wenatchee School Board took a look at security Tuesday evening — with no pretense that a mass shooting couldn’t happen here.

“There’s no way I can guarantee you that an incident involving an active shooter or a person with a knife would never happen at a school. It would be insane to guarantee that,” Bob King, the district’s director of safety and security, said after briefing boardmembers on current district safety measures and planned improvements. “But we can do a lot to deter and respond.”

He didn’t get any push back from board members.

“We have to tighten down. The norms are changing,” said board member Kevin Gilbert.

King told board members that he and his staff would this year work on security improvements that include:

Better controlling public access to schools. Currently, all the doors in district schools are locked, except main entrances. But the high school, alone, has 58 exterior doors. People still slip inside.

“There’s no way we can secure that building, and we don’t want it to be like a prison,” he said. “But there’s always more we can do.”

King said he hopes to begin installing “buzzer” systems at some schools that would require visitors to identify themselves before being allowed inside through the main entrance.

Better student behavior assessment. King would like to assemble a district “school assessment team” that includes law enforcement, mental health professionals and school counselors who could work together to identify troubled students before they become violent.

“The common denominator among the kids that commit this violence is that too often they fall through the cracks,” he said.

He pointed to a “Safe Schools Alert” link on the district’s website that allows students and their parents to report bullying and potentially dangerous activity anonymously. The district has 14 days by law to act on each complaint.

But a quick, group survey of the many students present at Tuesday’s board meeting proved that only a few of them knew the link existed.

“Information sharing — we don’t do that well here,” King said, urging the students to tell others about it. “Word of mouth is going to save the district a lot of heartache.”

Expanding staff training. King said he wants everyone, from bus drivers to custodians and kitchen staffers, to learn to become aware of and report behaviors that could signal a troubled student.

Superintendent Brian Flones said he’d seek feedback on security issues from around the district and report back before summer break.

A former police officer, King was hired by the district as a bus driver in 1998, but later headed the effort to launch a security program.

He said he received around 50 calls and emails from concerned parents, guardians and even some students following the Newtown, Conn., shootings, which claimed 26 victims, mostly first-graders.

Some told him they were afraid to send their kids to school, he said. Others wanted to know more about school security.

King told boardmembers that state officials consider the district’s security measures among the state’s best. He and his two uniformed school security officers carry stun guns and have on-the-job access, if needed, to firearms.

He has worked with local law-enforcement agencies to get officers familiar with school layouts and strategies and drills for responding to an “active shooter” on school property. This spring, he plans to include school staffers in the role-play drills to get them used to police officers’ reactions and responses to shooters in the classroom.

Staffers and students already participate in “lock down” drills designed to secure students quickly in case of emergency, he told boardmembers.

“People don’t understand. They think an active shooter is something new. This is not new and it’s not going away,” King said, citing statistics that more than 2,000 reports of violence in schools have been reported around the world. About 65 percent of the incidents happened in the U.S., he said.

A shooter in a school requires an immediate response, he said after his briefing to boardmembers. A massacre is over in the time it takes someone to call 9-1-1.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said, a little reluctantly considering the wide media coverage a National Rifle Association leader received when he said the same thing in response to Newtown. “It’s a sad thing, but it’s true. Our society is forcing us to do this.”

Christine Pratt: 665-1173

pratt@wenatcheeworld.com

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lonedog3 5 months, 1 week ago

all doors locked from the outside with a metal detector in the main entry! Armed guard at the metal detector? It cant hurt. Simple and it wont cost an arm and a leg.

Lisa 5 months, 1 week ago

I agree. Last year a Junior High student brought a gun to school and there are often students who bring knives to school. Metal detectors and a couple armed guards should be mandatory at all schools.

bking308 5 months, 1 week ago

Metal detectors, uniformed armed school security guards, locking doors, photo ID card, access control - they are all good and doable options but having a total community involvement is also a must. As Director of Safety and Security for the Wenatchee School District, my staff and I cannot be successful without the help of all staff, all students and all of our community. We must put our political differences behind us and do the right thing to protect the most valuable asset we have, our kids. Together we can keep our kids safe.

karilg 5 months, 1 week ago

As the mom of a high schooler, I have always felt my child was safe at school. There have been a few issues outside of school and I have always had the best cooperation and help to solve or prevent the issue from becoming a problem at school. I think the schools do the best they can to try and anticipate the possibilities and be as prepared as possible.

Dudleydoright 5 months, 1 week ago

Really? The threat is tiny. Are we really going to cower in a corner affraid of any "stranger"? The sad fact is you cannot and never will be able to protect yourself from a person bent on destruction. If someone wants to kill kids a ferterlizer bomb will do, and you don't need to even go inside the building. If that is too hard a 30.06 from a car across the street will do, and if that won't, running over a group with your car will. Let's quit trying to cover our butts (school board) and get back to education. As a kid I regularly took a knife to school to play mumbly peg on the play ground, if we got caught we got it back after school, today the police are called. Pitifully sad what has become of our society, we put up with naked body scanners rather than pull all twenty somethings from arab nations aside for questioning. P.C. will be the death of our civil liberties.

TerryFinn 5 months, 1 week ago

No two of these are alike. But we have seen some similarities:

1) Some seem to plan on dying in the process, either by their own hand or the police, making no escape plans. 2) They often want to shoot VERY innocent people- obviously strangers -- and lots of them -- perhaps to inflict pain but on people/families they don't even know. 3) Sometimes they have crossed parking lots or SOME distance to get to where they want to be, often in their body armor or whatever - and are sometimes spotted- but are seldom if ever confronted. 4) Mental health plays a role. 5) Gun availability obviously plays a role. .

We now know that if we are on an airplane and someone pulls a knife or other weapon or even just goes nuts, passengers (usually strangers to each other) after 9/11 will no longer sit idly by but instead will take matters into their own hands..., often without regard to their own personal safety.

Most of us don't want to question others or get involved in something even if we are suspicious because we can't be sure AND there are authorities who are supposed to deal with that.

A lot of "things" have to come together for these people to carry out their act and hopefully we can find ways to short circuit it.

School (or a Mall) safety is a complex issue and will likely require a lot of very, very careful planning.

lisuffe 5 months, 1 week ago

Somehow I am missing appealing to the parent's responsibility to assure their kid does not have access to guns, knifes, et al, to cause a tragedy.

karilg 5 months, 1 week ago

While I agree that parents should and most do take that responsibility to heart, it is still no guarantee. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Mikeh 5 months, 1 week ago

Many parents are irresponsible and will probably stay that way, and bad people will get guns no matter what. Therefore, put armed security outside schools to recognize the potential threat and attempt to intervene before the armed bad guy gets inside, where it would be incredibly hard to stop an attack in a timely manner. That and bag searches, with other preventative measures Bob suggests and parents will have more confidence in our communities ability to protect their kids. Shame that this is what its come to, but this is what its come to. I wouldn't care how many good guys with guns were around the schools providing protection for students, as long as the bad guys realized it would be incredibly difficult to get in and shoot he place up. I don't see any other logical, rational solution.

Buckhowie 5 months, 1 week ago

This article states: "Better controlling public access to schools. Currently, all the doors in district schools are locked, except main entrances." This is absolutely not true. Maybe in the middle of the day, but what about in the morning, or as school is getting out? I have a child who freely enters a door other than the front door many mornings at a Wenatchee school. It is unlocked, and there are no teachers or anyone guarding that door. I have often wondered to myself, "why is that door unlocked?" And, I am clearly guilty of not being more proactive in finding out. This is a failure on my part. How easy would it be for ANYONE to walk in that door? I will definitely be finding the answer to this question.

Unfortunately, in our society, we often wait until it's too late to do something. Guns are a factor here, but not the answer in and of itself. We, as parents, and society as a whole, must be aware of any failings in the system. And, more importantly, act on the questions we have before there is an incident. None of us wants to be "that parent" who always gripes and moans about everything, no matter how small. However, we may have reached a point where we ALL have to become "that parent", and start speaking our minds on the failings that we see.

I am guilty of this, and will be changing my "laid back" attitude on these issues. I only hope other parents, and all of Wenatchee, will join in making our concerns known.