Some Mahoning Valley school districts are continuing efforts to change protocols so their buildings are safer for students, as well as for adults working in and around the facilities.

Leaders in Youngstown, Boardman and Canfield school districts all say the districts have been doing what they’re financially able to do to improve security in their buildings and on their campuses.

The superintendents also are reacting to the law signed by Gov. Mike DeWine that allows educators to carry guns on school property with 24 hours of training.

Under the new law, local school districts will determine if they want to enable their educators and employees to carry weapons on school properties with the proper training.

Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro noted that educators need to be in safe environments where they can focus on teaching and learning, not on the threat of having unprepared woefully undertrained people–regardless of their good intentions–making split-second life-or-death decisions about whether to pull the trigger in a chaotic classroom full of innocent bystanders.

“It would take hundreds of hours of training and firearms practice to be ready for those situations; Gov. DeWine says he’s fine with just 24 hours of instruction,” DiMauro said. “It’s absurd.”

Educators should be trusted to do the jobs they’ve gone through years of training to do; instead, they’re being asked to shoulder the burden of potentially shooting one of their own students with just a few days of training, noted the OEA president.

He added, however, local control is a core tenet of the Ohio School Boards Association. It believes school boards in local communities should have the right to make decisions that reflect the ideals of people in those communities.

YOUNGSTOWN

Jeremy Batchelor, chief of staff in the Youngstown City Schools, noted the district did not have to make significant financial investments to improve the district’s security protocols over the last two years.

“We already had security plans in place,” Batchelor said. “All of our buildings have locked doors where you must be buzzed in to enter the buildings. All visitors are then run through a background check system and given a pass for the duration of their visits.”

“The only new projects we are working on is the upgrade of cameras across the district,” Batchelor said. “This will be ongoing.”

The district is using a combination of its general fund and grants to pay for the camera project.

“Generally, we believe the protocols we have in place have made our buildings safe.” Batchelor said. “We evaluate them yearly.”

Batchelor noted administrative leaders have been watching the discussion about lowering the training requirements that may allow teachers to have guns in the classroom.

“The only thing we can say now is that we understand there is a measure of local decision-making built in that we will need to work with our board of education and community to make decisions that are best for our district,” Batchelor said.

The Youngstown school district has 43 police and school resource officers working on its campuses. It also has two Drug Abuse Resistance Education officers.

BOARDMAN

Boardman schools Superintendent Timothy Saxton said the district requested at the beginning of 2021 that a member of the Ohio Schools Council examine the entire district and conduct a safety assessment.

“During the first few months of this school year, we applied for and received several grants to help with enhancing several areas,” Saxton said. “The safety assessment continued our focus on school entries, exterior and interior doors, cameras, phone systems, lighting, additional training for teachers and staff and adding social/emotional supports for students across the district.”

Building entrances at West Boulevard Elementary, Robinwood Elementary and Boardman High School have been redesigned with secure vestibules within the past two years, and at the high school, further enhancement of the security office will happen this summer.

Saxton said the district is doing several projects over the summer to beef up security, including the installation of a door barricade system that will be placed on every doorway in the district; a new access phone system that will place dedicated phones in every classroom; the addition of 60 new security cameras across all buildings and stadium; placement of eight new exterior doors at the high school; placement of air conditioning over the next two years at the three elementary schools that will enable windows to be closed and locked; and the improvement of a screening system to track visitors in school buildings.

Saxton suggested that any armed persons in schools should be trained professionals.

“We have trained and armed school resource officers in our buildings, and Boardman Township has a great working relationship between the police department and the schools,” he said. “Police response time to all of our buildings is excellent.

“At this time, and until there is further clarification on the new law, we are not considering arming teachers who are not professionally trained in law enforcement,” he said.

The district has three full-time SROs covering the high school, Glenwood Junior High and Center Intermediate school, and a fourth, who is a juvenile investigator and SRO supervisor. The district is determining whether it should add more.

CANFIELD

Discussing safety issues in the Canfield school district, Superintendent Joseph Knoll said the district already has mental health and red-flag training and is establishing a safety team, identifying classroom windows and engaging the Raptor system. According to the Raptor Security website, more than 35,000 schools protect their students with this visitor management system that screens and tracks everyone coming in and keeps unwanted entrants out.

“This summer we will have a large group of cameras coming to the high school,” Knoll said. “They will be going into the buses as well.”

The district is fortunate to have two school resource officers and a police department that can respond to any Canfield school within two minutes, he said. The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol are also within minutes of of the district’s school buildings.

Knoll recently met with Canfield’s fire and police chiefs to discuss safety issues.

In response to House Bill 99 being signed into law with its 24 required hours of training, Knoll said there is no way staff should be armed.

“We are in good hands (referring to the police presence), and we have a good plan in place,” he said.

He said plans constantly are being tweaked, and solutions being sought.

“Right now our worst enemy is that little wooden wedge that props a door open,” Knoll said.

LOWELLVILLE

Representatives of the Lowellville school district did not return messages from the newspaper about what actions it has taken to improve school safety in the last two years, or about the new state gun policies.

Lowellville in May had an incident during which a student fatally shot himself in the head in the cafeteria, which was seen by other students and staff.

Lowellville’s new superintendent, Christine Sawicki, was hired at the end of the school year, coming from the Youngstown schools.

TRUMBULL

COUNTY ESC

Superintendent Michael Hanshaw of the Trumbull County Educational Service Center emphasized that it is up to individual school districts to develop school emergency management plans that are sent the state for review and approval.

Hanshaw suggests these plans cannot be be discussed publicly to maintain their integrity and provide the highest level of safety and security as possible

“As educators we are well aware of the concerns of our students and their parents, our staff and communities at large,” he said. “Trumbull County ESC and our aligned school districts take tremendous care in developing and revisiting safety plans and working with our staff and community leaders, including law enforcement and their emergency management personnel, to prioritize the safety and well-being of the more than 24,000 Trumbull County students we collectively serve and represent.”