St. Johns County schools benefit from millions in safety, security enhancements

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When almost 40,000 students returned to the St. Johns County Schools this month, I’m sure that safety was as top of mind for parents and their children as it was for me.

As a School Board member, I have always said that no matter how outstanding our schools are, none of it matters if our students aren’t safe. Safety has always been — and must continue to be — our top priority. As we begin a new school year, I’d like to share just a few of the many improvements and enhancements that the St. Johns County School District has made to strengthen the security measures that keep our students safe.

 

Trained, armed security in all schools

I’m pleased to report that every school in the St. Johns County School District is now protected by trained, armed security personnel. As vice chair of the School Board, I have been vocal in my opposition to arming teachers. My fellow School Board members and I agree that teachers are there to teach and that the job of keeping our schools secure is best handled by trained security professionals. To that end, we have worked closely with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office to assign school youth resource officers (SYROs) to 15 schools. While the Sheriff’s Office continues to hire new trained SYROs, we have hired U.S. Security Services to provide a trained, armed officer for each of the remaining schools, providing full security coverage of every school in our district. With more than 50,000 employees, U.S. Security Services provides security for a number of colleges and educational facilities, and is therefore highly experienced in protecting young student populations.

 

Millions in security upgrades

The addition of these trained security officers builds on the tremendous investment our current School Board and school administration have made in recent years to ensure that we offer students the safest possible learning environment. In the wake of the tragic school shooting in Parkland earlier this year, some school districts across the state found themselves scrambling to implement new security measures. Here in St. Johns County, that wasn’t the case.

Last year, prior to Parkland, our school district invested $1.3 million in new safety and security upgrades at many of our schools. One of the first enhancements we were able to make as a result of the half-cent sales tax, in fact, was the purchase of 800 MHz security radios for every school and every school bus. These radios allow for immediate direct communication with the Sheriff’s Office, and their value was demonstrated during hurricanes Matthew and Irma, when the storms impacted cell phone communication.

In addition to conducting regular in-depth safety audits with the Sheriff’s Office, our school district has been conducting active shooter training drills for some time. In January of this year, all of our principals and assistant principals went through active shooter training, followed in March by a live active shooter drill held at Creekside High School in collaboration with local emergency response agencies. We will also be conducting regular active shooter drills with our students at our schools.

Increased mental health services

While security enhancements are important, we cannot ignore the importance of prevention and mental health services in keeping our students safe. Thanks to the extra investment from the state legislature, the St. Johns County School District was able to hire two additional school psychologists, six mental health counselors and three additional school social workers, bringing our staff to 18 school psychologists, 12 mental health counselors, 11 behavioral therapists and seven social workers.

These new psychological support professionals now work with our existing school safety teams. In years past, these safety teams met monthly; with our new security upgrades, however, we have added a separate threat assessment team that includes a guidance counselor and a law enforcement officer to focus on students at risk. We also have services for students provided on-site by third-party community partners, including EPIC Behavioral Services, Community Partnership Schools and eight other agencies. As we move forward we expect to expand our partnerships for direct services.

In our strategic plan, we continue to add additional avenues for social and emotional learning through such programs as Character Counts!, Capturing Kids Hearts, Link Crew, WEB and lessons by our guidance counselors. In addition, we have several peer-to-peer mentoring programs, adult-to-peer mentoring programs, clubs and character initiatives. We continue to build additional avenues to apply prevention into our schools.

I am excited about these many improvements and enhancements to our schools’ safety and security. While we will never stop striving to strengthen and improve our security measures, I am confident that our school board and school administrators — working collaboratively with parents, law enforcement and our community partners — can make the St. Johns County School District a statewide model for school safety as we are for academic excellence.

Kelly Barrera is the District 4 representative and vice chairman for the St. Johns County School Board. She lives in Ponte Vedra Beach.