Public input sought on conceal carry in schools

WORLAND — After seeking input from staff and parents on school safety, the Washakie County School District No. 1 Board is seeking input from the public.

The board is seeking input about school safety, specifically allowing staff to carry concealed weapons in the school. The survey may be accessed on the home page of the district website at http://www.wsh1.k12.wy.us or http://www.surveymonkey.com/r/concealcarrycommunity.

Business Manager Jack Stott said they sent out a thousand contacts for invitation to participate in the survey and now they are seeking more feedback for those in the community who do not have access in Infinite Campus.

He said they had a “decent response and results from staff, students and parents through the Infinite Campus program have been mixed. “There have been good arguments on both sides,” he said.

The survey is only a few questions — Name (optional). Do you live within the boundaries of the district? Are you a parent, student or community member? Do you support drafting a policy allowing employees to conceal carry in school buildings, in according with Wyoming statute? In your opinion, having armed staff that receive annual training would make buildings safer, less safe or have no effect?

There is also a place for additional comments.

THE LAW

The 2017 Wyoming Legislature passed a law that allows staff members to be armed if a district so chooses.

According to the law, “The board of trustees in each school district may adopt rules and regulations, in consultation with local law enforcement, to allow the possession of firearms by employees possessing a valid concealed carry permit under W.S. 6-8-104 on or in any property or facility owned or leased by the school district.”

SAFETY IDEAS

Washakie County School District No. 1 is looking at several issues regarding school safety and several of them were outlined by District Superintendent David Nicholas at Monday’s regular board meeting.

Nicholas said, “In my judgement this conversation about school safety includes a lot of pieces.”

He said the district is talking to someone about coming to do a safety audit for the district. “It’s a really big deal. How much trouble do you get in [now] if you leave a door open? Do you get suspended, as a teacher is there any kind of consequence, or as a superintendent if I leave a door open do I get in trouble. And how serious have we projected that we need every door locked and it stays locked. You don’t prop those open for any reason.”

He said that’s what a safety audit will do – they will look at every piece, is the glass a deterrent enough to slow down an intruder, quality of locks, intercom system.

ALICE training. There are four days to go to Powell or Cody for training. They are “train the trainer model” training. Nicholas said he has invited Washakie County Sheriff Steve Rakness and Worland Police Chief Gabe Elliott to attend the training at the expense of the district, or to send an officer and deputy. He also will have a couple of school officials go to the training.

“It just adds to our current protocol,” Nicholas said, but it is more aggressive and adds hiding, running and fighting back.

According to the website, alicetraining.com, “ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) Training instructor-led classes provide preparation and a plan for individuals and organizations on how to more proactively handle the threat of an aggressive intruder or active shooter event.”

Nicholas said, “There’s quite a bit of documentation that some schools and some scenarios have been successful in just fighting back. We’ll need to train our public and our kids as that happens.”

Additional items to consider, Nicholas said, include:

•School entry ID system. Nicholas said he, Jack Stott and board member Dean Dupree and Joe Bishop traveled to Powell to look at their system. In an interview in April, Powell Superintendent Jay Curtis said the district secured all vestibules this past year so every school in the district has a vestibule where visitors enter and they don’t go past the vestibule until they go through the district’s visitor management check-in system. Every visitor has to scan their driver license. The information is scanned against the child predator registry.

The vestibules have line of sight or cameras so secretaries are trained to identify potential issues.

Nicholas said the system worked quickly in letting visitors through. The system would require changes at each school. Included on the capital construction project list was having an architect look at the entryways of each school.

Dupree said there was bullet resistant glass between the visitor and the secretary handling the visitor system.

The board discussed looking into a system that would work with the district’s computer system, Infinite Campus.

“Personally I think we should pursue that at all five sites,” Nicholas said.

•Bollards in front of the school to prevent vehicles from driving into the building.

•Security behind the shops. Nicholas said the shop doors are often opened for ventilation. He said the whole area needs to be secured to the gaps between buildings are secured.

•Safety glass.

•Nicholas said there is starting to have some conversation in Wyoming about metal detectors – single-point entry metal detector. “I think you need to at least talk about that,” Nicholas said.

•Cameras. The district is installing 170 cameras this summer (some are replacement). “That helps us after something happens but doesn’t stop anything from happening, but I still think cameras are a good benefit to school safety,” Nicholas said.

•Full-time school resource officer. The current school resource office is shared between District No. 1 and Washakie County School District No. 2 (Ten Sleep).

“In a perfect world I would have five of the, we could not fund that, but I am interested in working hard to fund one full-time here,” Nicholas said.

•Concealed carry. The district is seeking input from the public.

•Mental health. The district had a mental health first aid presentation. “We are identifying kids in need. “See something, say something, if someone is struggling what are you doing about it, what intervention is taken place

Nicholas said any problem in the district is the problem of everyone there. “You don’t get to hide from this. School safety is all of us, all the time. We need to ramp that message up k-12. We have 300 employees, 1,300 kids. Are we all looking? Are we all being thoughtful?”

Nicholas recommended to the board to keep the discussion moving forward.

Chairman Don Bryant agreed stating that the issue needs to be on the agenda each month.

The board then directed to the superintendent to develop some type of safety issue timeline, starting with when the district would like to have the audit completed.