With violence on the rise at neighboring East Lansing Public Schools, the Lansing community is in fear.
After a gun dropped out of a student’s bag at East Lansing High School, back in January, the Lansing school board has been meeting to find strategies on how to control the violence and better protect the staff and students.
The safety of students and teachers has been an ongoing concern since the rise of school shootings in the past few years. Parents, students, and teachers have voiced their opinions on the lack of security within schools.
Rachel Willis, President of Lansing School District’s Board of Education, says it is doing all it can to help the community feel secure within the schools.
Spartan Newsroom Reporter, Zoe Ruffin, spoke with President Rachel Willis to hear about the strategies and steps Lansing School District is taking to protect students and staff.
Ruffin: Can you explain ways … Lansing School District is protecting students?
Willis: We use an ID system so that students are swiping into the building … We’ve been highlighting when students are getting on buses, the same IDs that they use for the lunch room … so that people … that are in the building are known to be in the building. So, they’re either staff or students or visitors that have gone through security screening. We … use wanding at sporting events and any large gatherings to check for… weapons of course. We have strict no weapon policies, … weapon free zones, things of that nature.
Ruffin: I have seen studies and violence does seem to be on the rise…did you have any thoughts to attribute why this might be?
Willis: …everybody experienced the pandemic. There is rising stress and stressors on individuals in families…
Ruffin: You talked about…everything people went through with the COVID-19… do you think that more mental health resources should be implemented in schools in general?
Willis: I think that the K-12 population is the prime population to address mental health issues. … there’s some mental health issues that manifest around young ages, there are things that we could do to provide support to them… and so in my background and trade, I’m a licensed master social worker so, I get that, I understand counseling … and I think that having access to mental health support is critical.
Ruffin: Do you believe that … The Lansing School District has been affected … by what is going on in the other school districts?
Willis: So, we try our best to make sure … students are aware of what our drills and protocols are. … I recently read a Facebook post for another neighboring district where students advocated for … a door … that led to the outside … the lock was … damaged enough that if someone tugged hard enough from the outside it would open. … and the student advocated … that they were like “I’m concerned” and they brought it to the attention of the superintendent. The superintendent acted on, they responded to it. So, I think those are the type of things that make students feel better, … if they bring a concern up that someone actually does something about it.
Ruffin: Do you … have any other strategies … that you are thinking about implementing?
Willis: Making sure that there are … updates to our protocol for lockdown drills and having emergency lockdown drills, updating our doors. The vestibule entry swipe card access … even just switching to swipe cards makes our building more secure … because you can actually get times of entry information, … who was last in there, when did they come. … Instead, if somebody had a hard key and they lost it, that can get duplicated or lost, you never know. Now, if somebody loses a digital key, we can disarm it. So as soon as they report it lost, we can shut it off, no one can use it to access the building…
Ruffin: What are your thoughts on … the walk-out that happened at East Lansing High School?
Willis: I mean if that’s the recourse that they feel they needed to take to get their … attention to voice their concerns for safety. We have a junior board of education that meets monthly and so there’s representation from every school that has a grade six or higher, … Where they get to meet directly with a board member, a student sort of representative assembly and they tell us everything from what they like about the school lunches to hygiene products, to lighting issues, to anything they want to talk about. … We try to be responsive that way, … have access to the superintendent.
Ruffin: What would you say to anyone that is in the Lansing Public Community or just schools in general that feel uneasy about school … your best advice to them?
Willis: You know schools are supposed to be a place where kids feel safe. … and so it’s our intention and responsibility to create that atmosphere, where kids feel safe, that no additional harm to access can happen to them while they are in our walls, our buildings. … The community has a responsibility to make sure that they are responsive and if they are seeing something, saying something. … Our district has invested in student support specialists, people in the district that really are our ears to the ground. … So, a lot of time when things happen in the community, we hear about them and we do an assessment about “is this going to come into the school?”