Concerns over school security topped the conversation at last Thursday’s Mathews County School Board town hall meeting, which was held in the Brooks Auditorium at Thomas Hunter Middle School.

About 15-20 people attended the approximately two-and-a-half hour meeting, with discussion centering on ensuring a safe environment for students to learn.

Daniel Schroeder of Cobbs Creek began his comments by saying that last year there was a knife made in the high school and a child was threatened to be stabbed with it, and this year there was a kindergartener who threatened to kill the whole class—and, he claimed, the sheriff was never made aware about either of these things.

“Last year, the sheriff pulled the SRO [School Resource Officer] out of the school system,” he said, and the school board has taken no action since then to bring the police officers back. “You had all summer to do something about it,” he said.

He pointed out that at the town hall meeting where he was speaking, the doors to the school were unmanned and unlocked and a student could come in and do anything, like stash a weapon for the following morning. In addition to the school board town hall, a family movie night was being held in the school’s cafeteria courtyard last Thursday.

“How bad does it have to get to do something? What has to happen,” he asked, referencing a comment made earlier in the week by school board member Calvin Morgan.

School board chair Dr. Mari Gibbs said that she shares Schroeder’s concerns. “These are very complicated issues that are collaboration-based that I anticipate in the very near future that we are going to be rectifying,” she said.

Sheriff April Edwards had informed the school board at its July 15 meeting that the SRO position was being dissolved and the deputy returned to other duties in the community. Superintendent of Schools Dr. David S. Daniel said that he has regular monthly meetings with the sheriff and Commonwealth’s Attorney to work through various issues, including school safety.

“The decision to remove the SROs came as a surprise to me and to the board on that day,” he said of Edwards’ announcement in July. Since that time, Daniel said, he has continued to work with the sheriff to get the SROs back into the school buildings.

“She’s working diligently on a grant that we will hopefully have notification of shortly” to fund two SRO positions, he said. A joint leadership meeting of the school board and county supervisors will be held to look at ways to come up with the required matching funds, Daniel indicated.

As far as open doors and other vulnerabilities, “we continue to address those” as they arise, Daniel said. He indicated that he is meeting with a vendor on Tuesday about the weapons detection system which he hopes to be able to deploy soon, both during the school day and “any manner of school events” outside of the school day. He’s also spoken with County Administrator Ramona Wilson about the county being able to use the weapons detection system for supervisors’ meetings.

On the issue of the student who had fashioned a knife-like instrument at the high school, “a deputy was involved in that threat assessment and the student was sanctioned for that behavior,” Daniel said. The superintendent said he was unaware about the incident Schroeder referenced with the kindergarten student, but he planned to look into it the following morning asking questions “to find out if something fell apart, if it fell apart and what do we need to do to correct it.”

“Imagine this is an after-action inquiry. That what we don’t want to happen has happened. And imagine if all of the comments that y’all are making right now are being made in depositions,” said attorney Bill Johnson of Onemo, who served two terms on the school board from 2006 to 2013.

In 2006, Johnson said, the school board had put cameras in the hallways and put locks on every door and sensors on those locks. “What the heck has happened to that, I have no idea,” he said.

The problem the division had in 2006 and the problem now is “we were operating schools like it was 1965,” with doors wide open, people coming in and out. “This ain’t 1965,” Johnson said. “It’s a different world. And it’s a very soft target.” He suggested that, on nights like tonight, when the school building is open, to at least have a teacher at the doors “eyeballing” people as they came in.

“No more words about what you’re going to do, you got to do it,” he said.

Daniel said that the division has overhauled all of its cameras since 2006, and the sheriff’s office has remote access to those feeds. Daniel conceded they have had a lot of “faults” with the electronic doors, but is working to update and improve them. “We do have some aging infrastructure,” he said.

Other topics

A number of other topics were touched on at the town hall, including providing students with educational resources at school media centers. Cynthia Montague said that 20 months ago she contacted the division offering her help in assisting the high school librarian set up a webpage with vetted sources, teach research techniques and provided a link to a library webpage from Nelson County. Twenty months later, she said, nothing has happened.

Daniel replied that he worked with the high school media specialist and she’s been “plugging away” with developing the high school library page. He said that he anticipates within the next two weeks that the high school library website will be up.

“The school library media center is the center of learning in schools,” Montague said. Students are required to have access before school, during school and after school, she said, which they don’t have when the library is closed.

Another speaker, Sharon Frye of Port Haywood, questioned the new chief financial officer position that was recently created, she said, at a cost of $131,000/year, and why the current “financial gurus” within the division administration couldn’t handle the job.

“We don’t have financial gurus, or haven’t had financial gurus, especially in the school system,” Daniel said, who then went into a detailed explanation of this new person’s ability to effectively manage the school budget.

“I’m anticipating much more efficiency in how we are managing the funds that we are earning and receiving so that we can make much better decisions on a monthly and yearly basis,” Daniel said. “It’s not balancing a checkbook, it is much more complex.”