Wyandotte Public Schools maintenance employee Don Icenogle (second from left), speaks about how students and teachers will wedge open doors at Wyandotte Roosevelt High School to allow people to circumvent the main door entrance procedure, during the Jan. 4 school board strategic planning committee meeting, as Director of Operations Bernie Bowers (left) and Rebecca Bearden, executive administrative assistant to the superintendent and board of education, listen.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
WYANDOTTE – The Wyandotte Public Schools Board of Education discussed safety measures being implemented systemwide during a Jan. 4 strategic planning committee meeting, discussing door locks, police officers in schools and active shooter response training.
Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate active shooter response training teaches students and staff to make lifesaving survival decisions in the event of an attack.
Roosevelt High School maintenance employee Don Icenogle said that after unlocking entrance doors for the student morning arrival, he goes around and locks and checks all the doors after the school day begins.
He said that all too often, people wedge the doors open with an object to let latecomers in, which compromises school safety. Doors from the gym to the athletic fields are often left unlocked as well.
“Having a door unlocked, and no one watching, anyone could walk in there,” Icenogle said. “And it’s happened, so I am letting you know about that.”
He said high school students who leave campus for lunch text other students to let them back into the school.
“They put a pencil in-between the doors so they don’t have to walk all the way around to the front,” Icenogle said. “I go back again and check the doors when I can, and every day this is happening.”
He said even staff members will wedge open a door when they take their class outside to walk around, which leaves the door open to anyone to walk into the building.
“So, yes, we need to do this ALICE training, but after all the hard work showing the kids how to protect themselves, why doesn’t someone start educating the kids that you can’t let people in?” Icenogle said. “You can’t let people in when they knock on the door. It happens. I see it.”
Operations Director Bernie Bowers said the board allocated $40,000 for him to make safety improvements in the schools, and said 900 school doors in the district, except for the Jo Brighton Center and the Early Childhood Center, have been retrofitted with enhanced safety mechanisms. He said they did not yet have the materials for the remaining doors, but they are “the safest doors in the district.”
He said on Jan. 18 or 19 they will receive the material to retrofit the remaining 200 doors.
Bowers said he is going to eliminate exterior school door locks which can be opened with an Allen wrench.
“We know what’s going on,” he said, adding that he and Mayor Robert DeSana have been addressing the issue.
Bowers said he can’t stop students or coaches from wedging doors open.
“We will do our best to get people the tools to make them the safest we can,” he said. “The tools that we gave these staff, with these door locks, is a great tool.”
Bowers complimented his staff for getting most of the door locking mechanisms installed over the holidays.
Supt. Catherine Cost said students, especially those in the high school, are being trained how to take control of a situation if an event occurs, even if an adult is not in a room, and they will know how to respond accordingly.
School Board Trustee Michael Swiecki said students need to know the importance of keeping doors closed at all times, and the consequences for violating the policy.
“About the time you get to the second person who is suspended for that, you are going to see that stop,” he said.
Trustee Kathleen Kane said repetition and consistency in reinforcing the message of school door safety must be implemented.
Bowers said coaches who are not teachers need to be educated about the safety protocols as well, and said he and Cost will be meeting with the police chief and deputy chief and a city official to get two police officers assigned to the schools, which would then go to the city council for approval.
Trustee Dana Browning said the city council would want a resolution from the school board to show that the body is in concordance with having police officers in the schools.
Jan. 10 is the next scheduled city council meeting.
Bowers said that ALICE training has reached 90 percent of its completion goal.
Director of Human Resources Tonya Brodie said they are picking up the pace to complete the ALICE training, including actual classroom drills with teachers, where they learn barricading and countering, and running through different scenarios, which the teachers will later pass on to the students.
She said parent meetings will be held, as well, to explain the ALICE training to parents and guardians.
Board President Robert Kirby asked what protocols are in place to train substitute teachers about how to react during an event, implying that they did not have an effective response during the recent incident at the high school.
Brodie said emergency guides are hung by every classroom door.
Kirby said he doesn’t want substitute teachers to be unprepared for an event which could be a life-or-death situation because they did not receive some basic threat response training.