Following the recent May and April bomb and gun threats at Stanton Middle School and Longcoy Elementary, the district is extensively reviewing how these situations were handled. Leaders are updating safety plans during the summer and anticipate hosting more theoretical drills with faculty throughout the school year.
“We’re not happy that we’re dealing with these safety situations … but I would say, unfortunately, it’s not just Kent City Schools. It’s not just schools. It’s our society,” said Kent City Schools Superintendent Tom Larkin. “It’s unfortunate that if you follow the news, there’s situations in large public gatherings. There are situations that are happening at grocery stores. There’s situations that are happening at movie theaters.”
Kent Police Administrative Lt. Mike Lewis said police are grateful no one was harmed or injured during either of those situations and fully intend on learning from the incidents.
“We need to take advantage of those situations and learn from them,” he said. “That will certainly factor into our training going forward, the discussions that we’re going to have with teachers, staff, students — you really need to learn from every situation, and I think everybody learned a lot from that.”
Back in February 2012, the Chardon High School shooting, where three students were injured and another three were killed, hit close to home. After that, Kent Police and the Kent City Schools wanted to take a more active approach to school safety.
The shooting motivated Lewis to undergo ALICE instructor training, an acronym for the different approaches students and teachers can take during lockdown situations: alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate.
“When I went through ALICE training, it wasn’t just police officers; there were a whole lot of school teachers and school administrators who were in my training class,” Lewis said. “So, that showed that Chardon in 2012 really had a big impact.”
Chardon did not only impact approaches to preparing for school shootings, but also encouraged police and the district to form a strong working relationship, keeping teachers and students prepared for any crisis.
In the last 14 years, Larkin said the police have helped the district create safety practices and protocols.
Having encouraged students to come to faculty and staff when they hear about threats, the district is now reminding faculty and staff to pass those concerns along to keep everyone informed.
“We’re re-emphasizing to all our faculty members on a regular basis that we are stressing to kids to ‘see something, say something,’” Larkin said. “Well, we need to be reminding ourselves when you hear something from students to make sure that gets to administrators right away.”
Understanding that students are often first to know about threats through social media and text messages, the protocol of “see something, say something” has become critical to preventing threats. Students need to feel comfortable approaching their teachers to follow this message.
“It starts with everyday relationships, and we are very fortunate at Kent City Schools. One of the greatest strengths of our teachers are the relationships with students,” he said. “We regularly receive feedback from students and parents that the relationships that are formed are one of the things that is unique and special about Kent City Schools.”
Lewis, who has worked with the district for over 22 years, explained teachers aren’t the only adults at Kent schools who have helped prevent safety concerns, as the presence of School Resource Officer Dominic Poe has deterred and eliminated potential threats.
“You can implement all sorts of safety measures, but if people aren’t there to make sure that those measures are always being followed, things get missed,” Lewis said.
He explained that students can go outside to go to their next class, go to their cars to grab items and DoorDash deliveries arriving to schools, so school doors might be propped open for anyone to walk in. However, having a resource officer make rounds around the school and check the security of entries lessens these threats.
In addition to that, seeing a police car parked in front of the school’s parking lot can cause anybody intent on causing harm to leave the premises.
Although the district has noticed a change in safety following the passage of the local ordinance guaranteeing a resource officer in 2014, the cost of having an officer has limited the Kent City Schools to one officer, making it hard for that officer to visit the seven schools daily.
To combat this issue, Lewis said day shift officers are expected to visit schools in their areas several times a week during their regular patrol. Poe is then designated to certain schools, as the time spent driving back and forth from the schools would make his job harder.
“They’re visiting their schools, they’re interacting with staff and students, they’re looking for any safety issues and concerns,” he said. “So, this has really been a full-on approach by our department.”
Lewis declined to share specifics about what schools the officers visit and how often because of safety reasons.
However, he did explain that having day shift officers visit schools has been a long-standing practice, but more strongly reinforced the past 10-15 years because of incidents like Chardon.
“We want the officers to build meaningful connections with school staff and students so everyone is comfortable with each other, sharing concerns and making the most positive impact,” he said.
Together the district and police comply with Ohio’s mandate to practice three separate safety drills, such as lockdown or evacuation drills, and one theoretical safety drill, sometimes referred to as a tabletop exercise for only teachers and staff to discuss potential safety situations, throughout the year.
“It’s a good exchange of information,” Lewis said. “It’s thinking out loud. It’s collaborating. It’s working together.”
Because varying concerns can cause school evacuations or lockdowns, police try to change things up when organizing drills. This then prompts students and teachers to be aware of their environment and choose the right ALICE protocol for them.
“What we emphasize is that every situation is going to be different — different circumstances entirely — and we want to provide you with the knowledge that is going to help you arrive at the best option for you in that moment,” Lewis said.
After each of the schools’ safety drills, the district conducts reviews with police about what went well and what they can improve.
Understanding the harms of gun violence, Larkin said the district will continue to keep safety a top priority, especially relying on their relationship with police to ensure students and faculty feel safe going to school.
“Safety is always our No.1 priority. Before we even get to teaching and learning, the school’s safety is something we take serious as school administrators,” he said. “It’s a burden that we carry with us and we take serious.”