LEESVILLE — A major focus of the Vernon Parish School Board’s meeting on Thursday focused on changes and upgrades that could be made to district schools to better ensure student safety.

Superintendent James Williams said that immediately following the tragic school shooting in Florida last month, the district started a new initiative with homeland security and local law enforcement agencies to conduct in-depth safety assessments at each of the district’s 18 schools.

“We’re at a time in our society that I didn’t think we would ever see. Time’s are changing and we are going to have to have some serious talks about upgrades we may have to do physically at our schools to make them more secure,” Williams stated.

At Williams’ request, a complete walk-through of each school was conducted by local director of homeland security Kenneth Moore and school resource supervising deputy Sammy Edwards.

Already, Edwards said that a few procedural changes have been implemented at the schools that he feels makes each campus better prepared.

“One change was that all classroom doors remain locked even during class time,” Edwards stated.

“It is a bit of an inconvenience for the teachers, especially those of the younger grades when they will have to get up and down to unlock the door the most, but we felt that it was worth it.”

Edwards and Moore told the panel that their main area of concern involved the security cameras at each campus. Many have been placed on a system that allows all cameras to be viewed from a central location, but Edwards said not all schools were on such a system.

Williams said that it is the board’s wish to have all schools be connected to one standard security camera network that would allow law enforcement agencies and the School Board’s central office to be able to login on their own to view each campus, but he said such a costly system would take time to purchase and install.

In addition to physical changes, Moore said that other procedures were being amended that would allow for better communication between the faculty and law enforcement. He said he believed that was the district’s first line of defense.

“One of the important questions to me that we are asking the principals and teachers is what kind of communication do they have with the students. More times than not, from a historical perspective, somebody knew that something bad was going to happen and the information didn’t get to the right place or the right person,” Moore stated.

In keeping with that tone, Edwards said that resource officers are also assisting teachers with becoming more aware of their surroundings.

“Before there was a separation where the teachers focused on teaching and the officers focused on safety, but now we are having to show our teachers how to be more observant and to view situations with a law enforcement frame of mind,” Edwards stated.

Moore said that he will continue to conduct walk-throughs of school campuses as often as requested by the school board, while Edwards said that school resource officers will be taking more situational training in the near future.ClassroomMGN Online