School metal detectors spark an intense debate in Santa Fe
Community remains divided as board is set to vote on installing the devices
Jessica Hagewood knew folks were curious to see if she and 31 others on Santa Fe ISD’s newly appointed security committee would recommend the use of metal detectors in the district’s four schools in an effort to keep students in the northern Galveston County community safe.
She had no idea, however, how passionate and terrified other parents were until last week.
“I had people Thursday — they were so stressed about that meeting, they were in tears just from having that out-of-control feeling,” said Hagewood, who has three children in the district. “I never thought in a million years that metal detectors would be more controversial than arming teachers and that conversation.”
On Monday, eight weeks after a 17-year-old gunman killed 10 people and wounded 13 at Santa Fe High School, the district’s board of trustees
will vote on several recommendations laid out by the district’s security committee, including whether to install metal detectors in any of the district’s four schools.
The board last week unanimously approved $1.7 million worth of security upgrades to Santa Fe High School, including panic buttons, new locks on all classroom doors, a more secure front lobby area and dramatic renovations to the northeast half of the school, where the shooting took place.
Metal detectors have become a focal point of campus safety debates across the state as schools and parents search for the best ways to keep students safe in the wake of several school mass shootings, including the May 18 massacre in Santa Fe.
Gov. Greg Abbott advocated for their use in a school safety plan his office released in late May. Two companies and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pledged to donate at least 16 metal detectors to Santa Fe ISD, should the board vote to accept the free machines.
But not everyone is so convinced. The day after the Santa Fe board approved its security upgrades, a security committee in Clear Creek ISD, which shares a border with Santa Fe ISD, advised against the purchase of metal detectors for its schools, citing a lack of reliable evidence supporting their use.
Some parents and school safety officials argue the detectors can deter and flag students or others who may try to bring firearms on campus. Others worry they can be ineffective and not worth the costs.
Robin Lambert, who studied mass shootings as a policy analyst for the Rural School and Community Trust, said communities across the country continue to wrestle with the issue.
“The metal detector issue is one that divides a lot of people,” Lambert said. “Some people who grew up with them in their schools say they made them feel safer. Others say they made me feel like a criminal. People just bring really different mindsets to that issue.”
Experts, school officials and parents agree that metal detectors or any single action is not a panacea for keeping schools safe. Still, some parents, like Kenzie Conway, say they are worth testing.
“It’s never going to be a perfect catchall,” Conway said, “but you can get detectors in the school and at least try.”
Effective step?
Research into their effectiveness does little to quell the debate. Most studies analyzing the use of metal detectors in schools have focused on subjective measures, such as student and staff perceptions, and few rely on data regarding their effectiveness.
Transportation Security Administration investigators found that agency’s personnel, metal detectors and X-ray machines failed to catch about 70 percent of fake guns and weapons officials tried to sneak onto airplanes in 2017, an improvement from the 95 percent failure rate logged in 2015.
Groups such as the Department of Justice and the Texas Association of School Boards have drafted guidelines outlining best practices for installing metal detectors in schools. Those guidelines, however, offer little regarding how effective the machines are at preventing violence.
“I think there hasn’t been time to really do all of those studies. They’re just now starting to get more prevalent outside alternative disciplinary placement,” said Sarah Orman, senior attorney in TASB’s legal services department. “Now, districts are looking at it because they’re desperate to do anything and help people feel safer.”
In lieu of reliable research, parents and school officials often look to other districts that use metal detectors.
Aldine and Spring ISDs are the only two larger school districts in the Houston area that use standing metal detectors at entrances to their middle and high school campuses.
Ken Knippel, assistant superintendent for administration at Aldine ISD, said his district installed detectors at one high school in the 2004-2005 school year before putting them in all middle and high school campuses the next year.
Teachers monitor the detectors and check students’ bags each morning from about 45 minutes before the first bell until classes begin. Campus security monitors, whose wages start at $11.25 an hour, take over after the school day begins, in addition to other their duties such as patrolling parking lots. Three districtlevel technicians, who are paid as much as $30,000 a year, stand ready to fix any glitches with detectors or other security features, including security cameras and card-access readers. He said the detectors do not need to be updated or recalibrated often, and the cost of upgrading the software is minimal.
Knippel said the process typically moves at a reasonable pace, adding that lines tend to form closer to the final morning bell, when students worry about being counted as tardy.
Since metal detectors programs were rolled out at the district’s middle and high schools, the number of illegal weapons confiscated inside the schools fell to about two from an average of around 15 each year, according to Knippel and Texas Education Agency discipline data.
“I will say it serves as deterrent,” Knippel said. “The more difficult you make it to bring something into schools that doesn’t need to be there, the less likely it is to happen.”
Campus climate
Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Haven International, a nonprofit campus safety organization, said metal detectors tend to be most effective in combating violence associated with larger urban districts, such as stabbings and the possession of knives and smaller firearms. When it comes to students or outsiders who want to commit acts of mass violence, Dorn said, metal detectors may not work as well.
“They can make it harder for a planned attacker,” Dorn said. “But if you have someone who is not afraid of jail or being killed by police, who’s not afraid of death, that’s a harder person to stop.”
He cited a 2005 shooting at a tribal school in northern Minnesota. In that case, a student shot and killed an unarmed guard who manned Red Lake Senior High School’s metal detector before walking into the school, where he killed eight others and himself.
Dorn and two other school safety experts said they worry that a focus on metal detectors could distract from other, less visible solutions, such as threat assessment and creating a school culture in which students are encouraged to report classmates’ potentially violent behavior.
Ken Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services consulting group, said it can be politically easier for districts to tackle the issue of detectors than delving into more complex issues such as mental health and behavioral interventions.
“It’s hard for educators and professionals who are aware of what works — much of it less visible but perhaps more meaningful — to talk cognitively and rationally to people who are, understandably, in an emotional state,” Trump said. “Because of all these pressures and anxiety and uncertainty, it’s a lot easier for a principal to point to a fortified entryway, additional cameras and, perhaps, more metal detectors to appease the community’s call for what is, in essence, a security blanket.”
Conway and Hagewood agree that districts like Santa Fe should also focus on creating safety-minded campus climates. Hagewood said the security committee will continue to meet and discuss less visible solutions dealing with prevention and mental health.
Still, both said including other approaches should not squelch discussions surrounding metal detectors.
“We have placed a huge expectation on our district for the time we’re talking about, and it’s going to be a learning curve” in terms of developing and implementing security measures, Hagewood said. “It’s going to take some patience going in, but we’re working to get everything to work.”