Katy ISD has focused on lessons of Sandy Hook
The December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut caught the attention of every public school district in the nation, including Katy ISD.
Since 2013, the school district has added staff to its police department and security forces. Training staff on safety and security also became a focus after the Sandy Hook incident, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.
“Katy ISD has participated in national school security efforts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Connecticut school safety efforts following Sandy Hook,” district Police Chief Robert Jinks said in a statement. “We are constantly evaluating and updating systems with the goal of placing many layers of security between those who would cause harm and our students.”
Established in 1989, the district’s police force patrols around the clock, with pri- mary focuses on protecting students and enforcing school laws. At least one officer is assigned to each high school, and all 60 campuses have roaming officers that patrol throughout the day, according to district officials.
As the district prepares to add three campuses in August, it plans to assign a security guard to the new junior highand several patrol officers at the other two new campuses, both elementary schools. The district has 53 total officers and 47 security guards.
The district also is committed to putting vestibules in schools. Those are chambers next to school entrances that serve to safeguard against intruders.
To enter a Katy school, visitors must pass by the front office and sign in. Vestibules have a line of doors that block access to the rest of the school. Those doors are typically locked until someone in the office clears an individual to walk through.
Vestibules have been con-
structed at new district campuses since 2003 and were installed at older campuses after a 2010 bond referendum. The district is upgrading some vestibules with added locks and other safety features, according to district spokeswoman Denisse Coffman. She would not specify howmuch the vestibules cost and did not have immediate information on how much the district has spent on safety in recent years.
But district safety training has not been as strong in recent years, said Diane Wilson, who retired as a Katy ISD teacher in the summer of 2015 after 28 years at the district.
“After Sandy Hook, the district had a lot of training to show us how to protect ourselves and our children,” she said. “But I noticed before I left that they got a little relaxed with the training since there’s been no big incident.
“What we need to do is continue to have better and more training for teachers because, even at Katy, a lot of new teachers come in and don’t know how to protect their kids in certain situations,” added Wilson, who is president of the Association of Texas Professional Educators’ Katy chapter and whose granddaughter attends WoodCreek Junior High School.
The district has trained all staff members to report any unknown person they see on campus, Jinks said.
Security has increased in recent years at campuses, he said.
Video surveillance and outside supervision of students by staff has been in place for years. Information regarding if intruder incidents have occurred was unavailable.
In neighboring Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, another fast-growth district, vestibules and other physical protection have been added at 35 of 85 campuses since Sandy Hook, according to Roy Sprague, that district’s associate superintendent of facilities, construction and support services.
He said staff there have received some safety training and safety policies are in place. Cy-Fair ISD has spent $55 million in physical safety structures since 2014 but much less on staff training.
Physical protection, such as vestibules, has been pushed at many school districts nationwide, according to Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, but he said that’s not what’s most important in safeguarding schools.
“One of the things that we saw after Sandy Hook is a tunnel vision for active shooter incidents and not for day-to-day safety incidents,” Trump said. “The vestibules, the access controls — all of those are good practices and have been implemented a lot, but we have to balance out the hardware and technology with the people side of things. We have to train staff on certain procedures like dealing with angry individuals and practicing for hypothetical situations.
“Schools that have greater financial resources like Katy have an advantage, but even some are not doing enough training because it’s difficult to get staff commitment.”
Katy’s safety systems are examined often, according to Jinks.
Trump predicts that districts will continue prioritizing physical pro- tection such as cameras and locks as gun violence continues, but he advises entities to invest more in training and security personnel.
For now, Katy district officials are focused on completing each school opening in the fall — finishing paint jobs, installing computers — but they’re also planning safety measures for the new campuses.
The schools opening in August include the district’s 38th elementary on Westridge Creek Lane, the 39th elementary on East Ventana Parkway and junior high No. 14 on Hawks Prairie Boulevard.