The Roundup: How Can We Keep Our Schools Safe?

BS: There is an incredibly tragic event that happened two Fridays ago. Two of our children were murdered, and it's unacceptable and it's terrible. Our job as a school district is to do everything we can to protect our students in the building, but also to have relationships with the city, with the police, and with the community. But first and foremost, what the school district has to focus on is making sure that the buildings that we control are safe.

And to your point, we have five schools in that area. And that's pre-K to 12th. So, we really need to make sure that we are doing all we can. I'm a very honest person. I'm very blunt. I can't promise. I'm never going to lie to you. I cannot promise that the school district is going to make sure that nobody's ever going to get hurt again. But what we can do is work tirelessly to partner with the police, with the community, with community organizations, with the mayor on trying to make things better. I've been to Rainier Beach four times now. And remember, I just started last Monday. Friday night, I'm on the phone with the police chief before I even start legally as the superintendent on Monday.

You asked the right question, which is, what can we do to make it safer? I think what we need to do is probably three things: One, we need to make sure that we and the community work together to do what we can, understanding the students and supporting our students. We've also got to focus on getting guns off the street. I was at a community meeting, and nobody said that. It was shocking to me. We have to deal with the guns that are coming into the community. The third thing is we also have to recognize that on that street, on that corridor, this is not new. And so when we say, "Well, we just need more of the same," that's not true. We have to change, and I think that means putting in more resources, but also making sure the community is part of this solution, and talking to the community.

BS: Absolutely. I wasn't the superintendent when that happened, but we do have a plan. But the issue, also, is people are just fearful, and people have anxiety. People are scared. So when they see something, they want to react, because their first thought is, "How do I protect kids?" And that's great. That's why they work for the school district. But we have to do a better job with professional development, saying, "Look, if you think something's happening, you have to call this person." You've got to call it in rather than just make a decision without the facts. But I don't fault them for doing it, because people are nervous, people are scared.

In Lansing, where I was the superintendent before, we had one of the largest refugee communities in the country, per capita, and one of the largest immigrant populations. We spent a lot of time with immigrant rights organizations, and with the refugee community, saying, here are the rules, here are the ways we're going to help you. And we even did things where we showed them the difference between a judicial warrant and an administrative warrant, because the law says ICE can't come onto property with an administrative warrant.

Look, I'll say this in 100% honesty: The safest place for a child to be is in a school, and that's because — as of today, and it could change tomorrow — there's never been a report of an ICE action in a school building. They've never actually done that. Now, might they wait at a bus stop? Might they go to the donut place? Sure. But when you're in our building, you're really protected, because we don't let anybody in. We don't even let strangers in. Because we're a school. We also have lawyers, we have rules, we have regulations.

BS: As somebody who's been a principal and a superintendent and a professor and a school board member, I've thought about this for 25 years. So this is something that is not new at all, but it's always specific to the community. My job is to hear what the community wants and make sure that I can do that, as long as it's also best practice. So what I would say about school resource officers: It's an SPD-employed person with a gun who has the power of arrest; I don't particularly want that person stationed in the school. Because one of the hardest things as a superintendent is, if you have somebody in your school that doesn't work for the school district, they don't have to listen to you. Cops are cops, and they're trained in a very different way than a third grade teacher. So what I hope, and I've said this to the chief, is I want to have a great relationship with SPD. I want them to make sure that they're at the bus stop. I want to make sure that they're at the corner, at the Bank of America, at Sherwin-Williams, at that Planet Fitness, because I can't be there. My job is to protect you inside. I don't necessarily want a police officer who is stationed permanently in a school building. They should be at the bus stop, and we should know them and work with them.

In terms of surveillance, the way I always think about things, and I actually said this in the community meeting, is when I think about our kids, I think they're the most important people in the world. So let's treat them like how rich people treat themselves. You know what rich people have? They've got cameras, they've got fences, they've got security, they've got all sorts of stuff. Our kids deserve that. So, when it comes to having cameras at our schools, we already have that, and we've had it for years. Sometimes it has nothing to do with safety from the outside. Sometimes a kid runs away. Sometimes it's an internal safety issue.

So, I think the school district's job is absolutely to have cameras, and to have our own security people, which we do. We have safety officers, but they work for the district. We train them. They're working as school employees. That's really powerful. And then the police should be our partner, a huge partner. They have to be at the bus stop, because I can't be there legally.