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Notwithstanding the "special needs" child in this case, we as parents, grandparents, etc, need to determine to change some things. I realize that this is a touchy subject with some folks (maybe not on this forum, but there are those) about allowing teachers to arm themselves to protect lives. To add to this discussion, I am placing a story from Tyler (with my comments within it) for your perusal. I just wonder, do we owe it to our law abiding, elder respecting, young men and women who go to school to learn and to become the adults we want them to become?

I have a question for those who say "nay" - would you place your son or daughter in front of a moving truck? How about placing them in a roomful of drug addicts or pimps? "Of course not! that's dangerous" you say. Yep! You want to give them every opportunity YOU can to protect them from those elements. I realize that some people don't raise their young ones as others, and you can't change them - got it - why not let the system help you?

Okay, that's enough of my diatribe. Here is the article.

Officials Discuss Security Issues On Campuses
By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

At the same time that a student allegedly stabbed his special education teacher Wednesday in a classroom at John Tyler High School, the school's principal was meeting with department leaders about possible security changes, the Tyler Independent School District superintendent said.

Although the school district has emphasized that the fatal stabbing of teacher Todd Henry was a "random act by an individual student," the incident has raised concerns about security on the campus.
TISD Superintendent Dr. Randy Reid said at a news conference Thursday that in general, John Tyler has a "significant level of security available." "We believe that we've had a significant level of security, but we don't believe that we're where we need to be," Reid said.

Security at the campus includes two full-time TISD police officers, two-way radios for the administrators and security personnel to use and 70 building surveillance cameras as well as a principal and six administrators on campus, Reid said.

Five additional support personnel were provided for monitoring hallways during the school day the second week of school this year, he said. Three are substitute teachers. He said that because of a decline in enrollment at the school, two male teachers were freed up to help monitor and supervise the campus.

Additional radios have been delivered to be distributed throughout the building to provide teachers immediate accessibility to campus administration and security personnel. He said those radios were actually delivered on Wednesday.

What are teachers/monitors going to do – throw the radios at them?

Reid said staff members also have been developing a plan for further consideration to enhance security in the building. Discussions have included items such as golf carts for mobility around the campus, additional surveillance cameras, personnel to monitor those cameras and discipline interventionists who specialize in working with students struggling with discipline issues. "We do intend to monitor the circumstances and add both personnel and equipment as needed," Reid said.

You can bet that it won’t be where teachers get permission to carry firearms!

After Wednesday's incident, questions were raised about possible cuts to security at John Tyler.

Reid said Thursday that the campus previously had seven individuals who were used to monitor hallways and/or parking lots. "Security was never really their purpose," he said. "Monitoring the hallways to help usher students out of the hallways during the passing periods has been the issue." They were not teachers but classified personnel, Reid said.

How many of you or your family members, have been to a school meeting where the school(s) are going to add more monitors for “security”?

Those seven "monitors" were reduced this year to one, who continues to monitor the parking lot, Reid said. However, the district did also add the five support personnel that second week of school. He said the district has spent the past two years evaluating the security plan John Tyler was using and how well it was functioning.

"Concerns continued, so at that point, we believed the best idea with a new principal coming in was to pull back from that area and give the principal some flexibility with those dollars to do what they felt like needed to be done in terms of the security plan," Reid said. "Dr. (Carol) Saxenian and her leadership team are working on additional plans, and we have funding available for them to move forward on those."

Dr. Saxenian was hired this summer as the new John Tyler principal.

Metal detectors have been discussed, Reid said. However, students pass from one building to another multiple times during the day. "But we've looked at other options," he said, noting portable equipment that can be used to randomly have kids pass through. "Those things have been effective in other communities and is something we might consider in the future."
He said because of the circumstances, Wednesday's incident has been linked to other security concerns parents have. "They're not related but they've heightened our awareness to those other security concerns, and I think they will probably initiate a number of meetings," he said.

The number of incidents, such as fights, at John Tyler has been similar over the past few years, Reid said, noting, though, that "the teachers believe it is a higher number." "I think it's because there's been more incidents where there were larger crowds around when those incidents occurred, and I think that has been more of a challenge," he said. "Those types of situations sometimes create a greater level of fear, and there's some things we're going to have to do to address that."
Incidents do occur weekly, he said, noting there have been multiple incidents in some weeks and none in others since school began.

Hey School Districts – things are NOT getting better!

He said the fights ebb and flow at both high schools in TISD. The superintendent said there is the same security staffing at both high schools, but said he believed Robert E. Lee High School doesn't have campus monitors who walk the campus, other than administrators and teachers who have that as a duty.

TEACHER SAFETY
The wife of the teacher killed in Wednesday's stabbing said her husband had been injured by a student before. Henry missed the first two weeks of school recovering from shoulder surgery after he broke up a fight at school last year, his wife said.

When asked about that Thursday, Reid said that Henry's wife told him about that when he visited with her Wednesday night. He said she told him that when Henry talked to her about it, his comment was, "'This is what I do.'"

"I think he knew in his role - and that's a specialized teaching role - that there were occasionally situations where students were more physical in that situation," Reid said.

Henry taught in the adaptive behavior program, the superintendent said.

Staff members do have heightened concerns since the teacher's death, Reid said.
"Anybody in their right mind would have to have a tinge of that," he said. "But our teachers are great, strong individuals who every day come in and do what they love. They come into a room, and they try to help young people develop into mature old people."

Reid said that teachers should try not to put themselves in harm's way, but said the incident brings to mind that, "Any of us, and I'm not just talking about in school, I'm talking about anywhere we go, this incident lets us know that life is a very fleeting thing. And at the place where we least expect that we could have a problem, we could have a problem."

"I don't think teaching is a more dangerous job than most jobs that are out there," Reid said. "I think the people that do it, do it because they have a love for children ... and are able to communicate well with children."

HOW?
The TISD board met in an emergency closed session to discuss security procedures. Reid said they discussed changes that were made and reasons for adjustments and other additional security measures.

Guns for teachers?

While those security measures are necessities, Reid noted, "None of those are solutions. The solutions are with relationships with the kids."

The superintendent said that he will "for the rest of his life" wonder if there was something he could have done differently to make that circumstance go differently. Everyone at John Tyler feels the same way, he said.

Reid said he can't see anything the district could have done differently to avoid Wednesday's fatal stabbing from happening.


Has the Tyler Area PTO mentioned anything about letting the schools allowing teachers the authority to arm themselves so they can protect themselves or others?

"But does that mean we're going to stop digging? No," he said. "We're going to go back through every step we took. We're going to go back through all of this child's history and look at every aspect of what occurred in this system to make sure there's nothing we can do better or nothing we can do to avoid having this kind of circumstance happen again."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.



Hooyah!

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20090 ... 4/0/NEWS01