Officials ramp up security, say more discussions taking place with stakeholders
Parents, students and McKinney ISD staff are discussing school safety and security measures following a mass shooting Feb. 14 at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.
To address parent concerns, MISD Superintendent Rick McDaniel and McKinney Mayor George Fuller held a town hall meeting April 4 to gather feedback and suggestions from residents on safety and security measures at the district. Fuller also asked the community to submit ideas for school and city safety to [email protected]. Fuller said this email address will remain open and active.
There are many measures MISD has implemented that the community does not know about, McDaniel said. He said the district needs to do a better job at communicating these measures to parents and community members.
“When you really evaluate all of the systems and processes ... and you look at our schools, they’re really one of the safest places on any given day to be,” McDaniel said at the town hall meeting.
MISD has poured more money and technology into safety and security in the past five years than it had over the last 20 years, McDaniel said at the meeting.
Community feedback has ranged from suggesting the use of clear backpacks and adding school resource officers, or SROs, in elementary schools to metal detectors at doors and additional training for staff and students.
“I would say every time we see a school shooting in our country we have more discussions about how we can improve staff and student safety,” Cody Cunningham, chief communications and support services officer at MISD, said in an email. “… I think all of these tragedies, including the Florida shooting, have brought about awareness about the importance of school safety.”
Current measures in place
In the 2016 MISD bond election the district allocated $6.5 million toward safety and security. This included new security cameras and updated fire panels and alarms, according to district documents.
Prior to the bond, there were 300 security cameras across the district. Only about 50-60 percent of those cameras worked, Cunningham said. Now the district has approximately 1,500 working cameras districtwide.
With the addition of these new cameras, MISD SROs have the ability to view security cameras from laptops in their squad cars, according to district documents.
MISD also upgraded security cameras on all 159 district buses before the first day of the 2017-18 school year. Interior security cameras on each bus were replaced with cameras above the passenger seats at the front and middle of the bus. Funding for these cameras came from negotiating a new contract with Durham Transportation, the district’s bus service provider, according to a press release from the district.
MISD crisis counselors dedicated to bullying on campuses and a tip411 line are also measures MISD has implemented to enhance school safety.
The tip411 line allows students and staff members to anonymously call or text the line to report a potential threat, fight on campus or if a controlled substance is seen in a student’s backpack, Cunningham said at the town hall meeting.
When a tip is sent in, it is sent to about 12 people on the campus in addition to resource officers at the campus, the campus counselor and administrative staff. The administrative staff then follows up with the campus and may involve the police department, if necessary, Cunningham said at the meeting.
Many of the parent concerns heard are related to SROs, Fuller said. These officers patrol campus hallways and meet with staff and students. Each MISD high school has two dedicated resource officers, each middle school has one resource officer and elementary schools do not have a resource officer, McDaniel said at the meeting.
“[With] all that we’re trying to accomplish, which is a lot of different things, nothing is more important to us than the safety and security of the kids,” McDaniel said during the meeting.
Changes in security
While elementary schools may not have a resource officer now, McDaniel said this is something the district is considering.
During an April 24 meeting, the MISD board of trustees discussed adding two new SROs to patrol elementary schools to the 2018-19 budget. The board will approve the budget in June.
Cunningham said adding two SROs is a start and additional officers is something that would likely be implemented over time as each officer costs approximately $100,000 to cover their salary, benefits and equipment.
“To be honest, the budget wouldn’t allow us to put one [SRO] at every elementary [campus] even if we felt like that was philosophically the right thing to do,” he said. “I think in an ideal world we all agree that having an SRO at every campus would be great. Is it realistic? I’m not sure. It will take some time. But I think more realistically we would be looking at starting with a couple of officers and then assessing that and looking at expanding in the future.”
Resource officers are McKinney Police Department officers who have specific training working in schools. The district and police department split the cost for the SROs, so if MISD decides to add more SROs, the police department has to agree, Cunningham said.
To enhance safety and security the district plans to have a dedicated monitoring room where a full-time employee will monitor security cameras across the district 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On April 24, the board of trustees approved hiring a full-time staff member for this position.
By early May the district will also add new signage to each campus near the A-phone, which allows visitors to buzz the front desk to be let inside the building.
The new signs will ask visitors to state their name, child’s name, reason for visit and show their ID.
Once visitors show their ID they will be let into the front office, and staff will run their ID through a system called Hall Pass, which runs the visitor’s name through the registry of sex offenders, Cunningham said.
“Part of the problem right now is some of it is a training issue [and] continuing to remind the staff, ‘Don’t get comfortable. Don’t just buzz people in,’” he said. “But part of it, too, is establishing that expectation of parents so they don’t feel like they’re being inconvenienced so they understand this is a safety issue—we’re doing this to keep your kid safe.”
The district is also working on revisions to its lockdown drills, including what students do during the drill. MISD also plans to increase training for teachers before the start of the 2018-19 school year, Cunningham said.
