Home > Gwinnett > Rick Badie / My Opinion > Archives > 2006 > October > 08 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USSchools not as safe as we assume
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dawn Peeples went to school to have lunch with her fourth-grade daughter the day after the shootings in Amish country.
Good thing she didn’t have foul intentions. She walked right in the main building at Alcova Elementary, undeterred and unnoticed by any kind of gatekeeper. Peeples checked in at the office, as visitors are required to do.
“All they have are signs on the front doors that say please register at the front office,” Peeples said. “There’s no desk or anything to stop anyone from getting in.”
And that concerns Peeples, not just for Alcova Elementary, but for all county public schools. She got to wondering how safe our campuses are, and what we — not just Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks and his lieutenants — can do to beef up security.
It’s easy to accuse Peeples of being overzealous, of overreacting and having a fortress mentality. Don’t. This mom’s on point. When it comes to kids, potential danger commands attention. This is a worthy subject anytime, but especially now, in light of Monday. A nut walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa., and systematically killed five little girls.
It’s been said that schools are the safest places for kids. Rare anecdotal incidents to the contrary make that concept a tough sell, though. Last month, we had campus killings in Colorado and Wisconsin; in August, it was Vermont.
Ronald D. Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center in Los Angeles, Calif. , has conducted thousands of safety assessments on public schools, including some in metro Atlanta. His experience, like Peeples’, is sobering.
“Typically, I find that I can get on any campus anywhere,” he said.
Bobby Crowson, associate superintendent for academic support for Gwinnett schools, responded to an e-mail with a litany of safety measures employed in the district.
Every campus has a safe school plan that’s updated yearly. The district has 20 full-time law enforcement officers, assigned to high schools and some middle schools. Visitors, as well as employees, must wear badges when on campus. Some schools have their sign-in desks in the hallways; others don’t.
Classrooms have call-back buttons to communicate with the front office. Tips about threats and weapons can be called in to an anonymous hotline ( 770-822-6513).
Yet school security remains vulnerable. In February 2002, a man walked into Mountain Park Elementary School and hit a fourth-grade girl in the head with a hammer. At the time, school officials called the incident an extreme rare occurrence.
Of course it was. But would you want your child, grandchild, sister or brother to be the recipient of one?
And that’s Peeples’ point.
“Our children are the most important thing we have,” she told me. “You can’t replace those little angels. There’s no way to stop anyone from walking into these schools, and we need to get that out to parents so something can be done about it. I think schools react well when something does happen, but I’m talking about preventive measures.”
You can e-mail Dawn Peeples with your ideas and input.
Comments
By b. white
October 9, 2006 07:53 PM | Link to this
You are exactly right. My school has three SRO officers and one policeman. Still someone could come on campus. Many of the doors are not locked to the outside because we have at least six trailors with students that have to have access to the building. We have back doors that are not locked. It’s likely that anyone trying to do harm is going to walk into the front door, yet all these access doors are left unlocked and easily entered by anyone. A work shirt and a fake ID and bam! you’re in. Scarey isn’t it!!!!!
By Bruce Wilcox
October 9, 2006 10:43 PM | Link to this
Who will the gatekeeper be? Unless the gatekeeper is armed they’ll just become the first victim. Maybe a fence like the one that is suppose to keep all illegals at home along the Mexican boarder, we all know how well that will work out. Maybe bullet proof vests for all students instead of backpacks?
I think people have become paranoid and overly protective. This fear of everything that some parents have just tranfers to the children. What a great way to prepare them for the real world.
There have always been nut cases out there, we just didn’t have instant news of it. My two daughters are grown and I have grandchildren in schools before anyone attacks. I’m just surprised we made it without the guards!
By LG
October 10, 2006 06:45 AM | Link to this
The saying goes “we find our strengthens hidden in our weaknesses”. Though Gwinnett County schools are full of connecting buildings and trailers, those doors leading the nut cases in are escape routes for our children to get out. Each building in my daughter’s high school has three or four doors, a nut case can only over one. Even my son’s trailers have two doors. A moving target is very hard to hit.
I am a mother of a nut case who came into an elementary school, and sexually molested my daughter when she was in 1st grade. I don’t take school safety lightly. But that was 10 years ago and another school system. Nothing like that or worse has happened since, and I’m pretty confident it won’t. More kids get out of public unharmed than harmed.
By jim d
October 10, 2006 03:45 PM | Link to this
Rick,
Security in our schools is really a joke. So much more needs to be done. Here are a few thoughts.
1) Metal detectors in every school.
2) Key pad entries
3) Secured front doors.
4) Secured parking lots
5) Upgraded video surveillance
6) Heightened adult presence *
Will all of this make our schools safe?
Well not really.
As long as we have students in the buildings our schools will remain at risk for violence. These tools may, however make them a bit safer.
By jim d
October 12, 2006 10:26 AM | Link to this
Rick,
Here’s a bit from one of Cal Thomas’s recent articles discussing the school safety issue that you may appreciate.
“The real problem lies outside of school and in the human heart and wider culture. Kids see violence celebrated throughout the world. Fanatics blow themselves and others up on orders from their god and in pursuit of a twisted view of heaven on earth. The news is filled with stories about missing and abused women, most of whom suffer a violent death. Entertainment programs are drenched in blood and gore. Gunfights are sometimes in slow motion so that the viewer can watch a bullet entering and exiting a human body, destroying tissue and splattering blood. While most who watch do not copy such behavior, some sick people do.”
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CalThomas/2006/10/12/school_daze