East and SMSD Review Security

East and SMSD leadership are working to improve school safety throughout the district following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Feb. 14.

Principal John McKinney formed a new safety procedure committee, which met Wednesday, to discuss ways to refine security procedures and teach staff and students protocols more effectively, so people “instinctually know what to do.”

According to McKinney, the committee is operating with a constant question in mind: “Are we doing all we can at Shawnee Mission East to keep our staff and students staying safe?”

The group, comprised of teachers, administrators, student resource officers and district and Prairie Village police officers, discussed ideas such as installing automatic door alarms or cameras able to identify student IDs.

“What we were doing, we believe was working,” McKinney said in an interview. “But let’s do more, just to make sure.”

Senior Thomas Luger believes the safety procedure committee is a good idea considering recent events. He hopes students will be able to involve themselves in the conversation, too, a sentiment McKinney said was the eventual plan for the group.

“I think [safety] should be an administrator’s number one job,” Luger said. “I think you need people that meet on a regular basis that talk about safety.”

In addition to East’s leadership meeting, SMSD Executive Director of Emergency Services John Douglass met with district resource officers and district police captain Mark Schmidt on Monday to analyze security breakdowns in the Parkland, Fla. shooting, such as the shooter being let in a side door. They’re also reviewing SMSD’s procedures, looking for potential “weak points” to improve – none Douglass could specifically name.

Douglass reported to the Board of Education on Monday night that he’s already identified two tactics the Parkland shooter used to be more lethal, tactics SMSD is now strategizing to defend. He was unable to provide specifics due to the sensitive nature of the information.

“These events are constantly mutating,” Douglass said. “They do things a little bit different each time.”

Typically, the district updates its security protocol every summer, but events like the Parkland shooting prompt additional review, Douglass said.

Douglass and Schmidt stressed they are confident in the district’s current level of safety. Three years ago, security systems were updated across the district. In the “state of the art” system, cameras are viewed by six people at all times, and sensor-controlled doors send alerts when they’ve been open too long.

But the district’s biggest asset in remaining safe has been its students, Schmidt said.

Students have reported threatening Snapchats, text messages, even notes written on walls to administration which are then investigated by the district. Douglass told the board that the district has stopped three threats that could’ve become potential active shooter situations in the last three and a half years, as well as nine other less-developed threats. Douglass was unable to provide specifics, but he said tips from students allowed them to track down and investigate those threats.

“The student population has been very good about telling us what they hear and see, and that’s where it starts,” Douglass said. “If we know where to look and when to look, it is not a terribly difficult process to run [the threat] to ground.”

School Resource Officer Lacey Daly believes propping doors open is the biggest security problem East faces. East has 42 entrances and exits. When kids run to grab their backpack or money from their car, they often prop open doors instead of returning inside through the main office.

Propping a door is “not just a temporary solution to a temporary problem,” it could cause more harm, McKinney said.

“If they’ve got to run out to their car, maybe it’s just the inconvenience of having to walk all the way back around the building to come in the main door,” Daly said. “But if that’s what it takes to make us safe, then I think that everybody should be willing to do that.”

In order to discourage propping doors, McKinney hopes to invest in automatic alarms for doors.

Currently, campus security officer Shane Fries is alerted through the security system when a door has remained opened for too long, then passes that information on to administration. An administrator closes the door and assistant principal Britt Haney uses camera footage to see what happened and ID who opened it.

But no significant changes will be made until the district finalizes its own plan to update procedure, Daly said.

Moving forward, the safety procedure committee will be reviewing the current crisis management guidelines, which include instructions for drills such as “code red” and “lockdown,” in the event of an emergency.

The safety procedure committee talked about creating informational posters to remind students what drills mean, McKinney said. For example, a poster may break down levels of security like a stoplight. Green may mean normal security, yellow a lockdown or secure perimeter situation, and red stop everything and find cover.

The team plans to meet next after spring break to continue brainstorming and forming ideas.

“Thank God, more often than not we get the best,” McKinney said. “But God forbid someday we don’t, we’ve got to be ready.”