Metal detectors at schools becoming a reality
Knox County TN July 31 2018 Many schools around the nation, including several in the South, have installed metal detectors following the mass shootings over the past several years.
While Knox County Schools has some metal detectors at its schools, including a small number of walk-through detectors and a larger collection of handheld wands, many in the district — including several school board members and the district’s security chief — are cautious about using them as a widespread strategy.
But about 100 miles north, another county school system, with the same name but in a different state, has already installed metal detectors and adapted to using them quickly, as have other districts.
“There are some merits to metal detectors, but there are many challenges too,” said Knox County Schools Security Chief Gus Paidousis.
Among the challenges, metal detectors will not capture everybody, Paidousis insisted. He also sees them dramatically changing the school day for most people.
“It would take a long time to get the kids in and out, and you’d have to funnel them through certain … entrances and those entrances have to be staffed,” he said.
Russ Oaks, chief operating officer for Knox County Schools, shares Paidousis’ concerns, adding that metal detectors are “only one tool,” a tool he deems is unnecessary and inappropriate to use daily at every school.
Knox County Public Schools, of Knox County, Kentucky, began using school metal detectors in late February, according to spokesman Frank Shelton.
The response from families and the community has so far been positive, he said.
They installed the first devices in a middle school whose council had also decided to ban backpacks. Getting rid of backpacks at one school sped up the screening process, and Shelton said nearly 500 students can pass through the screening in less than 10 minutes.
By the end of last school year, each school had at least one functioning unit in place.
A local attorney paid for the detectors.
Shane Romines, of the Copeland and Romines Law Office in Corbin, Kentucky, said he wanted to see a chain reaction resulting in schools in the surrounding counties taking security precautions, Shelton explained in an email. Romines announced his donation to the school district with a video on the law office’s Facebook page.
“That donation sparked several other local business partners to donate funds for metal detectors and a local dealer helped the Knox County Board purchase the remaining needed units at cost,” he said.
In total, the community donated $51,000 and four portable, wand-style metal detectors. Shelton said he does not know exactly how much the metal detectors cost the school district in total.
Romines, a vocal supporter of the National Rifle Association, also said he would be willing to fund firearms for teachers who are interested in arming themselves.
Shelton said some schools in the district have not yet banned backpacks, so they arranged for bus drivers to hold drop-off students if another bus is unloading, to limit lines at the door.
“Other schools with mostly parent or family drop-offs did not need to make as many adjustments, given the amount of time it takes to drop off and for the vehicle to pull out,” Shelton said.
The process is similar to an airport’s security line. Students slide cell phones and other pocket items across a table while they walk through a standing metal detector.
Shelton said a shooting that killed two at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, triggered additional precautions.
Knox County, Kentucky, implemented a 24-hour tip line available online or via text message for anonymous reporting of bullying incidents and other behavior that could be dangerous or disrupting at school.
“Our message to students, families and the community since the first metal detector was installed has been that this is only one tool and one safety measure,” Shelton said. “It takes everyone to ensure that our schools are safe havens for students.”
One of the schools held an open house event to demonstrate to families how the new detectors worked.
Within a month of the deadly school shooting in Benton, Kentucky last January, Marshall County High School staff started using metal detector wands to screen students as they entered the building.
“I went to the students and asked what would make them feel safer and they said ‘check our book bags,’ so we started doing that the next day,” District Superintendent Trent Lovett said.
The next day, Lovett said students came back and asked the school staff to search students with metal detection wands.
“I ordered them the next day,” Lovett said.
To get students to class on time, it took both school and district staff using metal detectors and checking bags at each school entrance.
“We were just exhausted, mentally and physically, and my teachers can’t teach like that, so for this year we ordered walk-through metal detectors,” he said.
In total, the 10 detectors for Marshall County’s middle and high schools cost $33,000. That’s with the addition of casters so the staff can roll the detectors around.
Six will be placed at the high school and two at each middle school by the start of the year in August. There won’t be detectors at the elementary school.
“I just think, for the most part, elementary kids are not going to bring anything like that to school,” Lovett explained.
The district has also banned backpacks, except at the elementary schools, where clear backpacks will be allowed.
South Carolina’s Georgetown County School District, bordering the coast, installed metal detectors in its four middle schools and four high schools in 2017, largely motivated by a push from the superintendent’s student cabinet for more metal detectors and more frequent use of them, according to Alan Walters, executive director of safety and risk management.
The walk-through metal detectors are used at random at each school, Walters said, explaining “it’s not necessarily every day and then when they are used, it’s not necessarily every entrance.”
The decision on when and where to activate them is made by each school and is largely driven by what’s going on at the school, Walters said.
The district, which also relies on metal detectors at football and basketball games, uses the machines because they’re a deterrent, Walters said.
And schools are able to shuffle kids through the detectors relatively efficiently. If a school is using the metal detectors at all their entrances, it can slow the school day down but not by a whole lot, “just a matter of minutes,” Walters said.
In trying to gauge how effective they are, Walters couldn’t come up with a definitive answer.
The district does not experience very many incidents, he said, “but it’s kind of hard to measure what doesn’t happen.”
As students file into school and have to be cleared by the metal detector, staff members stand at tables to the side of the machine, require students to empty their pockets and set down their phones and put into a basket anything else that might trigger the detector. Bags, musical instrument cases, and other belongings are searched as students walk through the device.
If a student does set off the detector, another staff member with a hand wand will conduct a more thorough search, zeroing in on the area of the person’s body where the device indicated a metal object.
Schools have confiscated pocket knives from boys and pocket pepper spray devices from girls and will often also find other illegal products on students through searches, such as tobacco products or medications they’re not supposed to have with them.
In Knox County, Tennessee, metal detectors at every school is not an idea that has presented to the school board, according to board chairwoman Patti Bounds, who added she has reservations about introducing them to schools on a wider scale.
“I think Knox County would have to visit other districts that have done so and really study those districts to see how it worked,” Bounds said.
She doesn’t believe it’s accurate to compare the use of metal detectors on thousands in airports with the use of metal detectors in schools.
“It would be a totally different dynamic,” Bounds said, though she couldn’t cite why.
“It raises more questions than it has answers right now in my mind,” Bounds said, pointing to uncertainties like how long it might take to get students into schools each morning and whether devices would be installed in schools at both primary and secondary levels.
School board member Terry Hill said she doesn’t have an opinion on adding metal detectors to schools but is firm they would not deter all incidents of school violence.
School board member Gloria Deathridge said she does not believe the board has ever discussed the idea of adding metal detectors to every school.
She has concerns about the potential for the devices to traumatize young students, noting that some kids are traumatized when encountering security in airports.
“It’s just something that I really have to think about,” said Deathridge.
Board member Mike McMillan raised cost considerations for installing detectors districtwide.
“If you’re doing something that you’re going to have to do at 90-plus schools, there’s going to be some costs and what that cost is, it depends on what you’re doing,” he said.
Capt. Les Mullins of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office is a father of two, including one Knox County Schools graduate and an eighth-grader. He doesn’t believe metal detectors will be able to prevent every kind of emergency, though he could envision them in schools.
But the decision to place them on campuses is up to the school system, he emphasized.
“So you’re basically sitting here asking me as a parent, do I … want metal detectors in the schools where my kids go?” Mullins said. “And that’s up to Knox County. That’s not up to me.”
As a law enforcement expert, he said metal detectors are “a tool,” but he doesn’t have a strong opinion on how valuable they could be in schools.
Deputy Chief Gary Holliday of the Knoxville Police Department also believes the decision to roll out metal detectors across Knox County Schools is “a decision best left to the school system.”
“If managed correctly and handled correctly, they could be an asset,” he said, noting they’re not a perfect solution as not all violence occurs inside school buildings, and such episodes don’t always involve students bringing weapons into the building.
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