School safety experts address advisory council revising plan

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – The last informational meeting before the Fayette County Public Schools District Safety Advisory Council reworks its current 10-point safety plan. School safety experts ranging from a school resource officer and high school principal to a mental health professional and Assistant Fayette County Attorney spoke to the council about different facets of school safety that should be considered.

Kentucky is one of the leading states for training hours required of school resource officers. It takes 120 hours broken up over three years to become a police officer inside a school. State Security Marshal Ben Wilcox says it’s a job that takes a special kind of person.

“99.9% of the time that’s what they’re doing is working relating to kids. Working as a teacher, working as a mentor, being that trusted adult. So we added a lot more to the actual mental health side of it in SRO2,” says Wilcox.

Mental health as a whole is a large topic surrounding school safety. Jon Akers with the Kentucky Center for School Safety says kids spend 15% of the year at school with problems at home and away from school often trickling back inside the classroom.

“Schools are more than just reading and writing the ABCs, 123s; schools act as a safety net for a lot of our children and schools are the vehicle for which we get a lot of services to our children,” says Dr. Clarisse Belle, a licensed psychologist.

Tates Creek High School Principal Marty Mills pointed out that in the last five years alone, schools have drastically changed. Mills walked the council through a typical morning at Tates Creek and some of the additional measures taken to keep his students, teachers and families feeling safe and trusting the school.

“In our current state and with social media and kids have so much access to devices and parents are right there, our families know that if something happens on our campus or in our building that’s out of the ordinary, they are going to hear from me,” says Mills. “I do not believe in having secrets, even when it’s difficult.”

Every expert before the council agreed an emphasis needs to be placed on helping kids and intervening before a situation escalates.

“We wait until children are pretty much drowning after they have had continuous, continuous, continuous problems and then you’re like ‘oh god, let’s get this person into treatment’,” says Belle.

The next District Safety Advisory Council meeting will be on March 23rd at 6 P.M. at the John D. Price Administration Building. It will be the first work session for the council on the updated plan.