FARMINGTON -- Farmington and Prairie Grove school officials had a few takeaways from the inaugural Regional School Safety Summit, sponsored by Springdale School District on June 7.
Stephanie Pinkerton, assistant superintendent with Farmington, attended the summit and said she appreciated hearing from local districts and local representatives about what they are doing for school safety and security.
"It takes everyone," Pinkerton said last week. "It comes down to making sure our people are doing what they are supposed to do."
About 120 professionals from 26 school districts attended the free event, held at Springdale's Tyson School of Innovation. The summit focused on school safety best practices and mental and behavioral health resources. Breakout sessions included topics such as vaping prevention, school law, cybersecurity, anonymous reporting, safety procedures and human trafficking.
Shawn Witt, chief information and security officer for Prairie Grove School District, attended the meeting for his district. No one attended from Lincoln Consolidated School District, according to Superintendent Mary Ann Spears.
Safety Always A Concern
Pinkerton said she believes safety is always going to be a concern for schools, especially in light of the fatal school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers May 24.
"I think that's something that's always in the back of our minds," she said. "What if that could happen? It shatters your heart."
Farmington is considered a small, safe community, she said, but school officials have to realize active shooter events can happen anywhere.
"We want to be as prepared as we can," she said.
Witt said two of his key takeaways from the summit were that the state is involved in school safety and the Legislature has passed several laws to strengthen requirements for safety measures, including some related to mental health.
"School safety isn't a destination. It's a journey because it's constantly evolving," Witt said. "It's important to raise awareness in the community and for each campus."
Springdale School District started planning its summit in early May, before the Uvalde school shooting. Damon Donnell, Springdale Public Schools student services director, said the goal of the summit was to "learn and grow from the collective experiences of other school staff."
Keynote speaker Cheryl P. May, director of the Criminal Justice Institute for the University of Arkansas System, challenged school officials and law enforcement professionals at the summit to make sure nothing similar happens in Arkansas, like the Uvalde tragedy.
Anonymous Reporting
Pinkerton said she already is gathering information about one program discussed at the summit, the ability for students and parents to anonymously report possible threats. Springdale already has this in place.
The program, called "See Something, Say Something," falls under Homeland Security.
If someone anonymously reports a possible threat, the report would go to an evaluation team at that school campus to determine if it appears to be valid. In Springdale's case, Pinkerton said about nine out of 10 anonymous reports are students threatening to harm themselves.
The program would provide the ability for a school representative to instantly chat with the person anonymously if a student is threatening self-harm, she said.
She said she will work on the details this summer and then present it to the School Board, possibly at its July meeting. She said the school would want to be able to reassure parents and students that any reports would be anonymous.
School Safety Teams
May discussed 30 recommendations that came out of a Safe Schools Commission formed by the state in 2018. These recommendations included a behavioral threat assessment team to develop a process for determining when threats are credible and how to handle them, a comprehensive school safety assessment every three years and at least one school resource officer at each campus.
Farmington has a safety team but Pinkerton said she is working on changes to this so there will be a district team and a separate team for each school building to evaluate threats.
Farmington has two school resource officers and a commissioned security officer at the middle school. Pinkerton said administrators have discussed whether to add more SROs or commissioned security officers for added safety but no decisions have been made yet.
Pinkerton said she believes Farmington has good security measures in place at its buildings and is improving on that this summer. All cameras are being replaced with new cameras, called Verkada cameras, that are high tech, offer facial recognition, clearer pictures and can be moved around as needed.
Jarod Morrison, director of technology, will give a demonstration of the new cameras at the board's June 27 meeting, Pinkerton said.
Farmington schools have lockdown procedures, buzzer systems for visitors to enter buildings and night locks for every door in all the buildings. This way, Pinkerton said, if there is a threat, someone in the hallway will be able to get behind any door on campus and lock it down.
Staff have lanyards with door fobs to get into the buildings so that doors are not left open or cracked.
Still, she noted, it takes everyone on campus to monitor this.
"Kids will be kids and one might put a rock in the door if they are expecting a friend to come in after them," she said. "We are continuously training our students and staff to help us secure the campus."
Staying Consistent
Witt said everyone is aware of school safety when there's a high profile school tragedy. The challenge, he said, is to keep standards consistent during the highs and the lows.
"Every school has to realize safety is important all the time and not get drawn into high profile tragedies that scare and shock us all," Witt said.
Like Pinkerton, Witt said he came away feeling good about a lot of things Prairie Grove already is doing for school safety, recommendations made by the Safe Schools Commission.
Prairie Grove has electronic access on all exterior doors and has laminated numbers on all school windows to assist first responders in the case of emergencies. All campuses have a visitor management system.
Like Farmington, Prairie Grove also has night locks on all its interior doors.
"There are some great things we've done that I feel we're ahead of the curve but there are things we can still do," Witt said.
He would like to expand the district safety team so that each campus has a safety coordinator. The team meets monthly and he said he would like to refine those meetings.
Keeping Doors Always Locked
"I think we have to be more diligent about making sure all exterior doors are closed and locked at all times," Witt said.
The Safe Schools Commission recommends a single point of entry for all visitors, which means that teachers and staff do not let visitors in through the back door. There may be exceptions to this but procedures should be in place for those exceptions, he said.
As an example, he said the back door was open for kindergarten graduation but two uniformed Prairie Grove police officers stood at the door for safety reasons.
This year, Prairie Grove School District will have three school resource officers, plus it has other commissioned security officers who work in the district.
Witt also said he appreciated a local inaugural conference on school safety with school districts in the region and expects the conference will grow each year.
"I feel like we can start the school year off in a better place than the year before and that's always the goal, to show improvement every year."
Pinkerton said a regional summit helps with networking with local people. She can pick up the phone and call an area school official for more information. At the same time, other schools are visiting to see what Farmington is doing.
"I think it was a great thing. I got a lot out of it that day," she said.
Janelle Jessen with NWA Democrat-Gazette contributed to this report.
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