Monongalia County students attending summer school at Morgantown High are already understanding how it’s going to be in August when the fall term begins.
That’s because they’re now passing through a high-tech weapons detector on their way to class.
Mon’s Board of Education members got a quick update on the devices during a meeting Tuesday night.
Along with MHS, the weapon detectors will also be in place at University High, Clay-Battelle and the county Technical Education Center for the coming school year.
The district initially purchased eight of the devices — then five more, just recently — in response to a school shooting in December in suburban Detroit that left four students dead, and the then-15-year-old suspect, and his parents, in jail.
Both school officials and prosecutors said the parents didn’t do enough to tend to the emotional health of their son, despite warnings from teachers who worried he might be readying to carry out such an act.
Then came the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, in May, that saw the deaths of 19 students and two of their teachers by way of a semi-automatic, assault-style weapon.
Neither Campbell nor BOE members have publicly discussed concerns over procedural lapses documented in the school at the rural Texas town near the U.S.-Mexico border as the carnage played out.
Surveillance video released Tuesday from Robb Elementary School shows officers in tactical gear standing in the hallway awaiting further orders while the suspect — an 18-year-old who was later shot dead by a Border Patrol team — continued firing.
One officer could be seen using a hand sanitizer from a wall dispenser as the force milled about.
With gun violence in America’s schools no longer an anomaly, Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr., along with BOE members and other officials, said it was time for the local district to act.
The reality is the reality, he told The Dominion Post last month, while discussing the new security measure here.
Every school in the district is outfitted with ballistic glass, “mantrap” entryways and a meticulous check-in process for anyone coming into the building, Campbell said.
That includes parents, the superintendent said then.
“I don’t want to suggest our buildings are no longer safe, because ‘safety’ is the word,” he told the newspaper.
Campbell said he and other officials took in a trade show in Pittsburgh in January, seeing the devices in action.
Keep moving
The detectors, which are manufactured by the company CEIA USA, aren’t like the beeping, cumbersome devices people automatically picture, he said.
You don’t have to empty your pockets of your keys or cell phone, he said.
The devices are calibrated to discern the metal density, of say, a handgun (or larger weapon) or a large knife.
Adam Henkins, who heads the district’s Safe and Supportive Schools division, said he’s impressed by the technology and the company’s marquee clients.
“Disney uses them, and Major League Baseball and the NFL uses them,” he said.
“Concert promoters use them. You’re looking at crowds of 60,000 or 70,000, moving quick. And they’re lightweight and completely portable. You could have them at Morgantown High in the morning and then at Pony Lewis Field that night for a football game.”
Deputy Superintendent Donna Talerico echoed that.
“You’ve probably gone through them and not realized what they are,” she said.
It’s not totally seamless, though, she said. Students will still have to set their district-issued Chromebook laptops off to one side.
Band instruments will take up some time, as their brass and metal components cause detectors to sound the alarm.
Every station at the four schools deploying the devices will be staffed by school employees and uniformed resource officers, she said.
The kinks will be worked out, she said, because they have to be.
“The reaction has been extremely positive,” she told board members.
“And this is one more layer of protection for our kids.”
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