Education
Safety committee looking for consistency in buildings that vary in age
After 19 students and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, Georgetown County School District officials started giving tours of schools to first responders to familiarize them with the buildings.
“If there is a major incident, it’s not just going to be the city police responding or the sheriff’s office,” Alan Walters, the district’s chief operating officer, told a school board safety committee last week. “You can have something happen in Georgetown and Midway Fire might come. And they’ve never been to a school in Andrews.”
In addition to getting to know the schools, the tours give the first responders a chance to get to know each other.
“If there’s a major incident, all of those folks are going to be there anyway,” Walters said. “Let’s not wait for something bad to happen. Let’s get them out there now and let’s go over the plan and collaborate.”
Walters appreciates the feedback from the first responders, he said, since firefighters, EMTs, law enforcement and emergency management people all look at things in different ways.
The school board created the safety committee earlier this month to review the district’s current safety and security protocols and make adjustments if necessary.
One of the challenges, Walters said, is that there are 58 years between the oldest school in the district, Plantersville Elementary, which opened in 1950, and the newest school, Waccamaw Intermediate, which opened in 2008.
Plantersville is one of five schools built in the 1950s. The newest elementary school is Sampit, which opened in 1980. All four middle schools opened in 2000 or 2001.
There are also schools, such as Waccamaw High, that have been expanded since they were built.
“Each one presents unique challenges,” Walters said. “We don’t have a cookie cutter template that we can use for all 20 locations,” including the district office.
The committee members at the meeting – Scott DuBose, Robert Cox, Fallon Bordner and Eileen Johnson – expressed an interest in participating in a safety tour.
At the last school board meeting, chairman Keith Moore, who is also a member of the safety committee, asked board members not to visit schools during instruction hours in May because a lot of state testing is going on.
Superintendent Bethany Giles reiterated Moore’s request to the committee members.
“The month of May is hard,” she said. “For security reasons, in terms of testing, we do limit visitors on campuses.”
Giles told the committee members that at the end of the day students’ performances on the state tests are “what it’s about.”
“You don’t want to be distraction or a hindrance to what needs to happen,” she added.
Giles suggested the committee could visit a school after hours.
Johnson said a school might already be “secured down” so they would not be able to see how doors are managed during a normal day.
“It’s going to be while the kids are there that something’s going to happen, not when it’s secured down or locked down,” she added.
Cox suggested the committee could visit twice: once when a school is open and once when it’s closed. He wants the committee members to be able to watch how the weapons detection systems work at the beginning of the school day.
“We’ve got to be there for that, otherwise, we won’t ever be able to see if that’s working properly,” he added.
Committee members also talked about making sure safety and security protocols are the same in all schools. The only differences, they said, should be due to the age of the students.
“Everything needs to be consistent. A lot of times when you have this many schools, and this wide of an area, it’s hard to stay consistent,” Cox said. “We’re going to work on doing that.”
Walters said parents need to be involved.
“We can’t do this alone. We’ve got to work on educating” parents,” he added. “We won’t find something in the metal detector if parents search that bag before they come.”
Under board policy, a special committee can only operate for two months unless granted an extension by the board chairman. The committee was approved April 1 so its work needs to be completed and a report presented to the school board at its June 3 meeting.
The committee plans to meet three times before its deadline. Committee meetings are open to the public.
