FORT SMITH — Parents’ attitudes about having a police officer in their child’s school changed in rural Montgomery County after a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six adults in a rural Connecticut school, a school resource officer said Wednesday.
“Most people know each other,” said Wendy Megyese, a Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy who is a school resource officer in the Mount Ida School District. “They questioned the need for a full-time school resource officer.”
Since the shooting in Connecticut, Megyese said, parents tell her they are glad she is there for the 515 students in Mount Ida.
Megyese was among 318 representatives of law-enforcement agencies, school districts and private schools who attended a Safe Schools Seminar on Wednesday at the Fort Smith Convention Center. The event was organized by Sebastian County Sheriff Bill Hollenbeck and Conner Eldridge, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.
School districts routinely plan for fires and conduct fire drills, even though few children have died in school fires, Hollenbeck said. Dozens of children have died in school shootings within the past 10years, but up until the Connecticut case, people were reluctant to talk about and plan for those situations, he said.
The deaths of children at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary affected the entire nation, Hollenbeck said.
“This could happen anywhere,” he said. “We have to have an open dialogue.”
After the shooting, Hollenbeck’s office began working with school districts in rural Sebastian County to help them assess and develop crisis plans, Hollenbeck said. The U.S. attorney’s office offered to assist the sheriff’s office, and the two organizations began planning the seminar.
Five years ago, Hollenbeck would have frowned on having armed teachers or guards in schools, but now he is open to the idea if they get proper training and equipment.
“We need to have open dialogue about that and any possible way we can protect our children,” he said.
School officials should put a high priority on having school-resource officers on campuses, said Mountain Home Police Sgt. Bubba Jones. Jones, a school-resource officer in the Mountain Home School District, gave a presentation during the seminar on responding to a gunman in schools.
School-resource officers are trained law-enforcement officers who work in schools as their primary assignments, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers, which is based in Hoover, Ala. The officers work to develop relationships with students and staff members, and participate in the education of students.
In Arkansas, 224 school resource officers work in 125 school districts. That means 48 percent of districts in the state don’t have resource officers, said Larance Johnson, administrator of the Safe Schools Initiative, based in Little Rock. The Safe Schools Initiative is a division of the University of Arkansas System’s Criminal Justice Institute.
Jones is the initiative’s main instructor for “active shooter” classes, Johnson said.
School districts and police departments often share the cost of the officers’ salaries and benefits, though a small number of districts pay the full cost, Johnson said. The officers are employees of law-enforcement agencies. The most common reason for a district not having a school-resource officer is money.
Mountain Home, a district of 4,000 students, has three school-resource officers, Jones said. He knows some districts that have one officer for as many as 9,000 students. When school-resource officers are stretched thin, they spend their time running from school to school, handling problems and making arrests.
“Your school-resource officer should be building a rapport with these kids,” he said.
A school districts also can improve security by conducting an audit of security and safety, which includes evaluating exterior doors, security-camera systems and procedures within school buildings, Jones said. He advised that a district consider using a vulnerability self-assessment tool, like one available through the Texas School Safety Center.
School districts and law enforcement agencies also need to consider how they will communicate during an emergency and make plans for communicating if cell phones and radio communication fail, Jones said.
Megyese started her job as a school-resource officer in August, and even though she had been in her job only a short time, the Connecticut shooting changed the way she sees her job.
“It just became more personal,” Megyese said. “There was no rhyme or reason to it. These victims were babies.”
Megyese serves all grade levels in Mount Ida. She eats lunch daily with the superintendent and two principals, she said.
“I know the kids,” she said. “I know the layout of the school. I know the administration. It’s easier to respond when you’re familiar with everything.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/21/2013