Manatee School District discusses school safety

With a year having passed since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the School District of Manatee County publicly addressed the changes made in the wake of what Director of Communications Michael Barber called “a community’s worst nightmare.”

“The world as we know it, at least in terms of school security and safety, drastically changed on Feb. 14, 2018,” interim Superintendent Cynthia Saunders said.

Now, one year later, the district is pointing to several programs to address school safety using school resource officers, mental health professionals and the guardian program.

As of the Feb. 11 news conference at Manatee High School, there were 35 guardians working in Manatee schools who have been added to the district’s security force. Each went through 144 hours of training from the Sheriff’s Office. One hundred and thirty-two hours of that training involved firearms and tactics, and the other 12 hours dealt with legal issues, Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said.

“We have been very pleased,” Wells said. “The training they went through is exactly what a law enforcement officer would go through in the academy.”

District officials said the school district completed a safety assessment to gauge safety needs with the assistance of law enforcement. Other changes included locking the front doors, implementing a buzzer system to get into the building, and upgrading the camera systems in the schools.

Barber said there are other additional measures that cannot be publicly discussed as a matter of safety.

Wells noted the Sheriff’s Office has investigated several threats against district schools on social media and has made arrests.

“We’ve tired to get the point out to these kids that this is not a joke,” he said.

The district has also partnered with Centerstone Behavioral Hospital and Addiction Center to provide 18 additional mental health counselors and behavioral psychologists to the school system, Saunders said.