Hall County School officials presented the school board and the public with a review of the school system's safety infrastructure at the board's meeting Monday in Gainesville.
The presentation came less than two weeks after a shooting at a high school in south Florida that left 17 people dead. Hall County Schools Superintendent Will Schofield said the presentation was not one of changes to the existing security measures.
"We are not reacting today to the fact that we are living in a world gone mad, we are reassuring our community that we take this task as sacred," Schofield said.
The hour-long review was also live-streamed on livestream.com to 500 viewers. The video of that strean can be found next to this article.
The review featured briefings from school staff on the system's facilities, law enforcement presence, transportation, planning and cybersecurity. While officials did not give many details on what additional measures might be considered in the future, Schofield said there were some steps that he would not be willing to take.
One of those that Schofield voiced his opposition to was a policy proposed by President Donald Trump to provide firearms to teachers.
"You look at the forensics of people, trained police officers, that get into life and death situations, it is frightening to see what trained professionals with years of experience do," Schofield said. "So the idea of 'well, just let your kindergarten teacher start packing and maybe good things will start happening', not on my watch."
One citizen spoke after the review saying she was concerned about recent reports that Atlanta Public Schools would begin implementing surprise active shooter drills during school hours. Schofield said that Hall County Schools had no plans to implement any similar drills.
Hall County Sheriff's Sgt. Seth Day also spoke at the meeting, laying out the sheriff's office's involvement with the schools. Every middle and high school in the county has had an assigned School Resource Officer from the sheriff's office since 1999. Day is the SRO for Johnson High School.
Day responded to a question from a board member about reports from Florida officials that the officer assigned to Parkland High School, the site of the deadly Valentine's Day shooting, waited outside the building while the shooting was taking place rather than running in to confront the shooter.
"The kids at my school, I've developed a relationship with and I talk to them every day. I would lay down my life for my students in a second," Day said. "We used to have a policy to where we would have to wait on a secondary officer. That has changed, and I would say even any SRO, given that situation, would violate that policy to go inside that school if they are not already there and engage the suspect and do what he has to do."
Board member Bill Thompson said he has confidence in Day and the county's other SRO's.
"Working with Mr. Day before and being around several of the other SRO's, there are students, I promise you, that feel the same way towards our SRO's, they would lay down (their lives) for their SRO."
Schofield also encouraged students, staff and the public to help them spot lapses in the security plans.
"If you're sitting their and you're thinking tonight 'gosh there's doors that aren't locked at my school', please say something to your principal immediately," Schofield said. "The expectation is that these doors are locked, these plans are followed, but I'll just be honest with you, I can't get to every school every day and neither can anybody else. We've got to do this together."
