Wake County school board members are calling on North Carolina lawmakers to provide more school safety funding and require guns to be stored safely.
The school board’s actions came during several hours of meetings that featured heavy discussion of current efforts by the school system to improve school security and a presentation on safe gun storage practices.
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The Wake County Board of Education approved a series of legislative requests Tuesday evening, drafting the two requests related to school safety just hours before the vote.
The board’s request follows a series of district school lockdowns due to the real or threatened presence of guns on campuses.
“Between the number of actual weapons on campus and the explosion in… (empty) threats on campus,” the board needs to do something, Board Member Chris Heagarty said.
Heagarty initially suggested that the state should require school systems to keep data on threats, particularly in a way that would allow schools to see how many threats were hoaxes or if some could be drawn back to the same students.
The board kept its request to lawmakers brief and generic, after deciding a more specific request would need more time to draft.
Tap to watch: Wake County School Board discusses school safety after week of lockdowns
Safe gun storage
Several board members emphasized safe gun storage during the meeting, as well.
Board Member Cheryl Caulfield urged all community members to safely lock their guns up.
“No one ever regrets taking that extra step,” Caulfield said.
The board invited a gun safety group, Be SMART, to speak during the board’s regular meeting Tuesday evening to discuss gun safety. The group was formed with funding from Everytown for Gun Safety.
Melanie Mottershead, a group volunteer who made the presentation, said the vast majority of guns used in campus violence come from the home in which the student lives, or in which the student’s friend or relative lives.
Mottershead said gun owners have affordable storage options for their guns while also being able to access them quickly, if needed. Proper storage means locking away both the gun and the ammunition, and doing so separately, she said. Most children know where their parents keep their guns, she said.
“It is always an adult’s responsibility” to prevent children’s access to guns, Mottershead said.
The group advises parents to store guns safely, model responsible gun ownership, ask other parents how they store their guns before allowing their children in their homes and recognize how much deadlier firearms are than other weapons. That's especially important to consider amid years of increasing suicide attempts among youth and young adults, and considering most people who survive a suicide attempt never try again, Mottershead said.
Ongoing safety measures
The board also heard an update from school system officials Tuesday about safety measures soon to come to campuses.
A uniform background check system is coming to Wake County schools, as soon as next school year.
The Wake County Public School System is interviewing companies for an electronic screening system that would flag school visitors for certain criminal convictions or restraining orders, according to Russ Smith, the district’s senior director of security.
That was one many updates Smith provided to the school board during its work session Tuesday afternoon. The updates stem from a 2021 security audit at each one of the district’s nearly 200 schools. Another 18 schools are still being audited, either because they are new schools or because students were housed in “swing spaces” during the original audit.
The school system is also reviewing policies to go with the visitor management system. Principals are meeting with administrators about the results of their individual schools’ safety reviews, and leaders are considering other measures, including potentially moving the system’s anonymous reporting tip line to the Say Something app used by most other North Carolina school systems.
The current tip line is only a phone number. Smith said he believes the district should consider adopting a new tip line.
The board is meeting for the first time since six schools went into lockdown last week.
Numerous district schools have gone into lockdown this year, related to threats on social media or students’ bringing guns to school.
“These lockdowns are very traumatic,” Heagarty said. “We have to take each one extremely serious.”
WRAL reported Monday the school system does not track how often lockdowns occur, and the state does not require school systems to do so.
Lockdowns are to an extent at the discretion of the principal, and sometimes schools go into lockdown because of events occurring in the surrounding neighborhood.
But the lockdowns have disrupted student learning and caused stress among students and their families, as gun violence has been a major concern for schools for years.
In 2021, the school system received an audit report from a team of contracted retired law enforcement officers to audit safety measures at each of the district’s nearly 200 schools. The district published major recommendations but has kept the report concealed to prevent revealing information about how schools protect themselves or how schools may be vulnerable.
In June, the board reviewed the feasibility of building “security vestibules” in old schools. Security vestibules are entrances that require visitors to go through two sets of doors — and a visitor screening — before entering a building. The system builds them in new schools, but system officials advised the board they cannot be built in older schools without also conducting major, multi-million-dollar renovations.
The North Carolina General Assembly provided several million extra dollars this school year in additional safety measures, with temporary extra funding for general safety measures and permanent extra funding for school-resource officers. Research shows school-resource officers can break up fights at schools but don’t prevent school shootings.
The Wake school system applied for funds for an electronic visitor background check system at every school but did not apply for funds for school-resource officers.
The district has officers in every middle school and high school and four at elementary schools, largely funded by the town law enforcement agencies where the schools are.