Floyd County schools talk security
♦ The system will roll out a new visitor database.
During their Monday morning meeting the Floyd County Schools Board of Education heard from their chief safety and security officer about school safety during the upcoming school year.
Rick Flanigen brought board members up to speed on the current projects he is working on to make the schools a safer place for students.
The system will be rolling out the Raptor Visitor Management Program, which will cross reference every visitor and volunteer with the U.S. National Sex Offenders Public Registry. The system will be implemented at every front office across the system, Flanigen said.
“This way we will have an electronic database of who is in that school,” he said.
Visitors and volunteers will be required to insert their driver’s license or government issued ID card into a card reader which will alert front office staff if a registered sex offender is trying to enter the building. According to Superintendent Jeff Wilson, the system will be paid for with help of federal grant money marked for security and will cost around $1,000 per school. The system will be ready to roll by the first day of school, he said.
The system will not perform a background check on the visitors, Flanigen said. Only the sex offender registry will be checked since it is public record. Other public records such as active warrants will not be checked by the system, he said.
The school system is looking into whether or not parents of students who are registered sex offenders will be allowed in school. Wilson said his understanding of the law is the system could not deny a parent of the school entry regardless of their status on the registry. He said the system would have a staff member monitor the parent while they were in the building to make sure they would only interact with their child.
Brinson Askew Berry Law Firm partner Stewart Duggan chimed in and said the system does not have to allow the offenders on school property whatsoever. The law has been analyzed by a number of jurisdictions he said. While the system does not have to change its policy or practice on allowing parents who are sex offenders to see their children at school, the system can certainly prevent it.
“The children have a right to a free adequate education, but parents do not rights to be on the premises,” Duggan said. “If push came to shove and there was someone you felt very uncomfortable with, you do not have to allow them on (school property).”
“If that’s true, we may talk about that,” Wilson said. “If you are coming in and you come up on some sex offender list we want to know who you are and what you’re doing.”
On other school safety notes the system has updated its emergency plans and made it to where it can be viewed on mobile devices. Flanigen said the system is trying to move away from paper copies and make it so when a plan is updated the changes can be seen immediately.
Flanigen has also been working on arranging reunification sites around the county in case of an emergency. The system would chose a site and bus students there in case of an emergency he said.
The locations of the reunification sites will be kept confidential to ensure student safety he added.