West G Board Discusses Parent/Teacher Safety Concerns
Following weeks of input from parents and the community, West Geauga Schools officials weighed in on how to improve safety and communication April 24.
Following weeks of input from parents and the community, West Geauga Schools officials weighed in on how to improve safety and communication April 24.
Board Vice President Christina Sherwood said she has been meeting with parents over the last several weeks, as well as people who have reached out with concerns.
“I have four pages of notes from all of them, but most of them were fairly consistent. One of the most consistent messages that I got was that our communications need to be improved,” Sherwood said.
Concerns from parents poured in after an incident April 3 involving West Geauga Se- nior Brandon Michael Morrissette, who was arrested for bringing a handgun to school with reported plans to shoot multiple students.
Sherwood said some teachers told her they felt comfortable and more in the loop during the April 3 incident, while others did not quite know what was happening.
“This was specifically to our ‘shelter-in-place’ policy. The middle school seemed to have gone a little bit sideways because some people handled it differently,” Sherwood said. “Some of it was ‘We’re not really sure what we’re supposed to be doing’ and some of it was, ‘We’re in a music room and we obviously can’t conduct music right now, so we’re just going to kind of hang out.’ It felt more like a lockdown than a shelter-in-place.”
Board President Ben Kotowski said he spoke with students and one of them told him their teacher did not know how to handle the situation.
“I think this is a place where we could really make a very simple improvement. When a teacher is in a position where an emergency is happening, their role changes. This kid told me the teacher said they were uncertain what to do and that is not good leadership in a position like this,” Kotowski said. “Even if the teacher is not certain, I think it’s very important the teacher projects a certain amount of confidence. That’s something which we could change very easily.”
Sherwood said everyone was in reaction mode that day and some things got missed.
“We’re just trying to figure out how not to do that if there’s something that we need to communicate to all four schools at the same time,” Sherwood said.
She then addressed the issue of the phone systems, specifically, the public address system and the district’s cell phone service.
“It doesn’t look like there was a plan B for when (the phones were down) and we have had several instances this year where our phones were down. I think that’s been an issue that we’re looking into (it) because our phones should never go down,” Sherwood said, adding she and school Superintendent Richard Markwardt have been in contact with people regarding the district’s cell phone service.
“Especially as it relates to Westwood (Elementary School) because that seems to be like a particularly evil spot for cell service, which makes it hard for us to communicate to our teachers with cell phones,” she said. “We’re going to be looking into what’s called Bi-Directional Amplifiers, which should help boost the cell phone coverage in those specific dead zones. We are going to be talking about where our vulnerable spots are more closely in the coming weeks so that we can identify where those boosters would be most effective.”
Sherwood reiterated the district has already been in communication about increasing police presence — another concern raised by parents.
“They know that we have a school resource officer in the high school, but I think they’re feeling like we need to address our vulnerable spots, which is all of our buildings,” Sherwood said. “I know that we are looking at approving that hopefully soon and get it done as quickly as possible.”
Sherwood said there will also be two Alert Lockdown Inform Counter Evacuate-trained officers in the Chester Township Police Department and one of them will be the district’s school resource officer.
“We’ll have the ability to have an ALICE trainer in our district that can help train our teachers in different protocols and the other one will be working with the police department,” Sherwood said. “They will do the training together, but one of them will definitely be our SRO.”
Markwardt said the district has not done as much active shooter training and/or training related to a person with a weapon in the building as he would like to see.
“It’s something that we thought would not happen. I know that we had a neighboring school district that had a situation like this in the last 10 years, but it’s something that no one really wants to think will happen,” Markwardt said. “That was something I had raised with the police department earlier this year, something that I felt was imperative that we do. The events of April 3 underscored the need for that, but prior to this time, I don’t think that was something that was as considered as some of the other types of threats.”
Shelter-in-place and lockdown protocols could be included in ALICE training, Markwardt.
“One of the things people think when they see ALICE is that it goes in a series of events and it does not,” Markwardt said, referring to ALICE as a list of choices with strategies that are options for school staff to help themselves and students stay safe.
“You never know which of the letters is going to kick in first. I’ve had quite a bit of training in ALICE from my prior work experience, but I don’t think our staff here has,” Markwardt continued, adding some staff members have come from other districts who do a more thorough job of incorporating ALICE into their threat training.
Board member Bill Beers said he has brought up the policy of backpacks in classrooms to Markwardt several times.
“I know that in the past, they were not allowed and at some point, somebody made a decision to allow them back in. When a decision like that is made — which is clearly safety-oriented — we need to have some way to ensure that it is not overturned in the future,” Beers said, adding the policy used to be no backpacks, trench coats and other garments in the classroom that could hide weapons.
Kotowski said all of the criticism that has transpired in the aftermath of April 3 has been constructive.
“It’s not taking away from the fact that we were very successful in the efforts of the district in averting a tragedy,” he said.
Markwardt emphasized what resident Becki Gierman said during the public participation portion of the meeting — that every situation is unique.
“One does not have the option of analysis paralysis in a situation like this. You have to act decisively. You have to act immediately. In this case, our administrators did exactly in my mind what they should have done,” Markwardt said. “We didn’t have a single kid get injured or killed in this. The possibility was very real — the danger was very real.”
