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After the school shooting in Winder, Georgia, the threats in Troup County, and the perceived threats, exacerbated by social media, in Chambers County, VTN sat down with school administrators to discuss safety in our local public and private schools. 

Having a plan

In the State of Alabama, all schools must adhere to certain state-wide safety protocols, like the creation of a School emergency operations plan. Local school boards are required to develop an emergency plan for each school in its district, and AISA schools create similar plans. 

“We constantly have to revise our safety plans and procedures that we have in place as incidents like this happen. We have yearly conferences where we meet with other people within the state, other safety directors and superintendents and such…we have firsthand experiences that we listen to people that have gone through similar things,” said Benji Mitchum, Chambers County School District Director of Transportation, Maintenance and Safety. 

During the CCSD orientation, new teachers, led by Mitchum, receive safety training. That is just the first introduction to the protocols, meetings, and walk-throughs with School Resource Officers, principals and other staff, and requests are handled throughout the year. 

Jennifer Boyd, Superintendent of Lanett City Schools, said, “We have state requirements that have to be met. But beyond those state requirements, just ensuring that training takes place. Training is key, and each year, we do have safety teams. We do partner with our local police department. We do partner with state agencies, and we make certain that everybody is trained.”

All of the schools communicate with local law enforcement when developing their plans and training personnel. 

“[Law enforcement] do after-hours drills inside of our campuses. And we encourage them to use those buildings so that when they’re doing those trainings overnight, they’re familiar with the layout of those campuses from firsthand experience,” said Mitchum. “So in the event that they did have to go to those campuses, they’ve been there.”

Kim Plank, head of school at Springwood, said the school administration works with local law enforcement to make updates on security systems. 

“Most of the time, it’s a conversation, just, ‘What are you hearing?’ and then we can kind of assess what we need to do on our campus,” she said. 

All public and private schools work with both city and county law enforcement whether it is a walkthrough of the building or overnight drills. 

“They have access to our blueprints as well, our evacuation plans…So they have access to everything on campus, and they can see where everything is,” said Jon Owens, Chambers Academy headmaster. 

With advancements in technology, there have been changes to school security. At football games for CCSD and LCS, metal detectors are set up. Chambers County teachers have lanyards that can alert administration and law enforcement during an emergency. Cameras cover all campuses and automatic locks are widespread. However, most schools in America have one or more of these, as did Apalachee High School. 

All the administrators seemed to agree that the key to safety is relationships. 

“Our biggest tools are our eyes and ears, you know, as far as adults in the building and then, the students in the building as well, being able to listen to them,” Mitchum said. “Just to make sure that you know everything’s taken into consideration if they are concerned about things.”

Boyd said, “It’s not just up to the SRO. It is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that our campuses are safe. And it is serious because anything can happen, but if we’re all following those roles and responsibilities to fidelity, it will decrease the likelihood that a tragic event will occur on our campus.”

Do these events inform decision-making in how these plans are formulated?

“Of course, we have our own plans in place, but when something like this happens, it understandably raises the alarm and concern of not only our staff and people that work on campus, but families and just our whole school community,” Plank said. “So we look at and assess our plans.”

Springwood had a scheduled lockdown soon after the shooting in Winder. Plank said that while they take all their drills seriously, the timing of that drill gave it a “heightened sense” of importance. 

“Whether it’s down the road or whether it’s on the other side of the country, they’re all just as important to us as far as school safety goes,” Mitchum said. “So where it happens doesn’t matter to us…We have to take those things into account. So we’ve done a lot of updating in the past few years.”

Owens said that these incidents do inform certain procedures, but that schools should constantly be questioning if their campus is as safe as it can be. 

“There’s people out there that say, ‘Hey, this is never going to happen at our school.’ Well, it can, and it can be anywhere, anytime. So you can’t turn a blind eye to it. And I’ve got people in this building that have the same mindset about safety,” he said. 

How has safety changed over the years?

In the past couple of decades, or over a career for some administrators, how schools view safety has been irreversibly changed. 

“I would definitely say that the security piece has changed,” Boyd said, noting that when she started her career the schools had open access.

“Now we have a lobby that all visitors enter. They do not automatically enter the main school building. On our campuses, there is a lobby that our visitors enter, and they have to be buzzed in,” Boyd said. “I’m very proud of that, but that was something that was not in place many years ago.”

Many administrators recall the shift after specific events like the Columbine shooting in 1999 and the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. 

“I actually was at a school about 25 minutes south of the Sandy Hook shooting,” recalled Plank. “[There were] major changes after that.”

“I was a high school teacher when that Columbine shooting happened, and then Sandy Hook …just totally changed the game, and had people thinking about safe doors [and] how you practice your drills,” Owens said. 

Plank explained, “[It’s changed] on every level, dramatically. I would just say, in every way…What we expect, what we can tolerate and not tolerate as different school communities is just dramatically changed. What we define as being safe and secure, is remarkably different today than it was 20-30 years ago. So we have to respond to what we need today.”