Recently, our School Board held a Study Session to discuss student safety with a panel of staff members, including one of our School Resource Officers. The conversation centered around how we protect the physical and the emotional safety of our students.
Physical safety includes the measures we have in place in our schools to keep students safe. It also includes systems and staff whose job it is to protect, patrol and prevent incidents from happening.
Executive Director of Operations Paul Marquardt said our campus safety staff and School Resource Officers (SROs) work hard to build relationships with students, so that when they see something concerning, they’ll say something to a trusted adult.
“Our kids are some of the people that really make sure that we’re keeping each other safe in our buildings,” he said. “Oftentimes they're the ones that are reporting, making sure that we know about things, or their families are. And so those relationships we have with those families and those kids are so critical.”
When it comes to physical security measures, there’s a lot of technology at work, including our camera entry systems and other security cameras across the district. SROs and campus safety staff are able to monitor situations using more than 1,000 cameras around the district.
Thanks to our voters, money from the 2019 bond was used to update our camera systems a few years ago. Board Vice President Marcus Young said that’s something that needs to be continually upgraded to keep up with new advances in technology.
“We can’t stop everything before it happens,” he said. “I do want to make sure that we are putting money into things that will expedite responses – put our SROs in the best situation when they’re coming into a situation blind.”
Security cameras are good tools, but Director of Security Bryan Streleski said it all comes back to building those relationships with students.
“It’s about our relationships with our kids, with our staff, with our community to make sure we stay safe,” he said. “We can put cameras in place, but it comes down to, are people willing to come talk to us?”
School Resource Officers are one piece of the safety and security puzzle that is funded by our Educational Programs and Operations Levy. As Pierce County Deputies, they help with law enforcement and crime prevention, but also play a critical role in safety education. They train with our staff and students during lockdown drills, and they debrief with administrators after incidents happen, so we can continue to get better as a team.
By staying connected and staying vigilant, we can work together to ensure our students have the safest schools possible. Board President Terrance Mayers Sr. summed that idea up best, “I speak to teachers, I speak to community, and I know the heart of the people that are sitting across from me and next to me and I know they're doing their absolute best to make sure that our kids have a safe place.”
You can watch video of the entire Study Session here.
