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Community Conversation: Follow Up

On Monday night we engaged in a conversation that brought together agencies that are working with us to address safety in our schools. We posed your questions to our panel and had a discussion around safety efforts in our school.

Our panelists included:

Mark Keel, Chief of the S.C. Law Enforcement Division

Kevin Brackett, 16th Circuit Solicitor

Kevin Tolson, Sheriff of the York County Sheriff’s Office

Chris Watts, Chief of the Rock Hill Police Department

Andrew Jones, Director of Safety and Security at Rock Hill Schools

Dr. Keith Wilks, Assistant Superintendent of Support Services at Rock Hill Schools

 

You can watch the replay of the discussion on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IppQ0shAlx4

Following our community conversation we also included a Safety Update in our regularly-scheduled board meeting where our elected officials were able to ask their own questions. You can view that conversation on our website: https://www.rock-hill.k12.sc.us/Page/9488

Here are some of the preventative measures our community has in place to keep our schools safe:

  • Law enforcement officials are encouraging responsible gun ownership which includes ensuring a weapon is secure and are willing to provide classes or support to parents seeking more information.
  • Gun locks are available, for free, from Rock Hill Police Department.
  • We are encouraging our teachers, students, neighbors to share information with us (See Something, Say Something).
  • Our School Resource Officers and School Security Officers to continue their proactive work in staying involved with our students on campus.
  • We will continue to have our safety team visible in our schools and will continue random searches more frequently.
  • We are considering how to implement metal detectors or the usage of metal detectors in a way that can work for our campuses.
  • We will continue to aggressively make our tip line available to everyone in our community and pursue and follow up on every single tip every single time: https://www.rock-hill.k12.sc.us/Page/6778
  • We will continue to engage in training so we are prepared to respond to any incident we may face.

We will keep this conversation going because we are dedicated to the continuous improvement mindset in approaching safety in our schools. Our next steps include reviewing best practices in other school districts across the country. We will also begin considering a move toward clear backpacks in addition to continuing the conversation around metal detectors for every day usage.

At the end of the day, we hope you will join us in this effort and continue to support us. We welcome your feedback, questions, and ideas as we continue to navigate through the rest of our year.