Lorain Schools must put focus on security

Lorain City Schools CEO David Hardy Jr. is on the right track examining ways to address recent concerns about school safety.

During a community forum Oct. 2 at Lorain High School, Hardy announced his plans to bridge communication gaps with the community concerning school security.

This comes after the past couple of weeks where Lorain High School has dealt with three incidents including a false Level III lockdown Sept. 25, a Level II lockdown Sept. 26 following a shots fired incident and a concerning Snapchat post Sept. 27.

One of the components of Hardy’s plan is to hold weekly meetings with city leaders to review school behaviors and incidents in the community and within the school.

And this makes sense because the parties will share information.

In addition, the district is in the process of reviewing school safety plans and getting feedback from Lorain police Chief Cel Rivera.

Another component of the plan is Hardy and Rivera announced the Lorain Police Department would create a specialized task force to support school security.

Rivera said the two-fold strategy seeks to address factors that create violence in schools and would emphasize intervention for youth with involvement from the city and local nonprofit organizations.

And the Police Department will look to re-energize the interest of other partners and the juvenile court system.

What’s key here is Rivera wants the city to play a major role in school safety.

Rivera wants it clear that people talk a lot about youngsters being the future, but “we don’t support them with public policy or public funds.”

The police chief also wants to see more programs targeting youth return to the city to provide more opportunities for young people.

At the school level, Hardy pointed to initiatives aimed at involving scholars in the conversation and increasing their voices along with reviewing school safety procedures.

During a two-hour meeting Sept. 28 addressing school security, Hardy was joined by Rivera, Mayor Chase Ritenauer, Lorain Safety-Service Director Dan Given along with the Lorain City Schools Board of Education and the Lorain Academic Distress Commission.

Hardy suggested recent events forced the district to have a conversation around the community and school connection that this is the role of, not only the leadership within the school, but also community leaders who work together to address these needs.

Hardy said it was the collective responsibility of the community to come together and find solutions that work for everyone involved.

This includes adults - including parents and guardians — spending more time understanding the students.

Hardy said there’s no denying that the conversations that adults have with each are important.

And he said there’s no denying that understanding the relationships adults have to create in learning is important.

Hardy believes the students have many answers to so many of the problems.

For such a long time, voices of young people haven’t been heard, he said, and adults haven’t asked them to speak up. Hardy said it’s time to listen to them.

He also said there are a lot of good things happening in the schools and that the scholars need to be celebrated.

In recognizing there are improvements to be made in the schools, Hardy said the media is providing an inaccurate picture of what is happening and this perception is becoming the sole narrative.

Hardy acknowledges that the district has to do a better job of handling some of the “misbehaviors” taking place.

But he claims it has become the narrative versus a situation they need to address.

Hardy continued, “So as these situations come up and these misbehaviors might be happening we’re seeing negativity spewed across newspapers, we see people jumping on television in front of television stations and saying here’s the things that are happening in our schools and people take that as the reality for all of our schools and the narrative becomes pervasive.”

Hardy has his opinion, and we disagree on this issue.

The Morning Journal and other media report criminal behavior and the facts on the crimes, whether it takes place in the schools or not.

But we also report on the positive things scholars are doing in the schools, and away from the campuses.

Hardy must focus on keeping each and every person who enters one of the doors in the district safe, and not attack the media for doing its job.

There are some bad people committing crimes near schools, and, sometimes, in the schools, and the media will report it. Attacking the media will not make the schools safer.

As the leader of Lorain Schools, it’s Hardy’s task to find ways to keep the students safe.