By: Dr. Darron Arlt - PHS Superintendent
Last week I spent the better part of two days discussing school safety preparedness and response.
It’s quite complex and can be frustrating as “What if…?” questions persist, and you start to come to a realization that we really can’t guarantee the safety of our students, staff, and guests. It’s virtually impossible to compile a plan that addresses every imaginable scenario.
If someone is determined to wreak havoc at school, they will.
Our best opportunity is to recognize warning signs and triggers to prevent someone from targeting the school and to establish protocols with local law enforcement and first responders to minimize the time from the start of an attack until the threat is neutralized.
Last Thursday, I spent the morning with local, regional, and state law enforcement and first responders to think and talk through a response to an active threat at our school. We have some complications due to the nature of our facilities and outdated safety features.
We addressed some of those and talked through how we could immediately notify first responders and protecting our students by either running, hiding, or fighting. Hunkering down inside a classroom is no longer the default response. We expect to continue the conversation with our first responders so that we can cut through the chaos that would exist during a threat to minimize any harm that could come to our students.
On Friday, I went to Norfolk to listen to Phil Chalmers.
He is a national expert on criminal profiling and counter homicide training. It was quite disturbing to learn about the causes, warning signs, and triggers that propel someone to enter a school intent on killing students and teachers.
The media always focuses on bullying as being the reason someone “snapped.” That can be a trigger but there are a variety of additional underlying factors that can add up to increase the possibility that a student fits the profile of a school shooter.
A few other indicators are: fatherlessness, obsession with violent entertainment or guns, knives, bombs, a lack of spiritual guidance or discipline, a sense that no one cares about them, and mental illness.
Back in the day, if we had a quarter, we played Pac Man and Donkey Kong. Today kids have unlimited access to hours of Doom and Grand Theft Auto. I asked a junior high student one day as we were dismissing school on a Friday…”What are you going to do this weekend?” He said…”Run over some hookers.”, an obvious reference to GTA. I was speechless.
We’ll never say “It can’t happen here” but I do believe that it takes all of us…it takes a village as they say. We can always use more mentors for our students.
School is the only place where some of our kids feel connected or that someone cares about them. If you feel called to be a mentor, please contact the school and become a Teammate.