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19 students and two teachers were victims to deadly gun violence at Robb Elementary School and you've already Texas how can we protect our students and teachers from these tragic acts here in Arkansas and how safe are our schools?

Joining me for this discussion are Dr. Cheryl Mae, director of the Criminal Justice Institute, David Hopkins, superintendent of the Clarksville School District Secretary Johnny Key of the Arkansas Department of Education.

Carol Fleming, president of the Arkansas Education Association.

And Mike Mertens, assistant executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators.

I want to thank you all for joining me for this really important discussion.

And I guess to get things started off.

Dr. Key or excuse me, Secretary Key, I'm going to start with you.

How safe do you think our schools are Donna, thank you for having me on.

And I'm happy to talk about this.

I think our schools are safe.

I think the work that came from the commission the School Safety Commission in 2018 has been very valuable for us in supporting our districts and helping them create safer environments.

Looking at those pieces that may have been missing before, not just from a physical security, but from a procedure standpoint, also we we are seeing a lot of opportunity coming from coming out of COVID and some things that have happened in the schools since then.

We're really there's some commonality between things that we put in place with COVID and things that are helpful with school security.

So I think the last few years we have increased our security levels across the state.

OK, that's comforting.

I'm sure, to a lot of parents and students who have to go to school every day.

Dr. Cheryl, may, I want to talk with you about this.

And Dr. and Secretary Key touched on this.

The Arkansas School Safety Commission, it was formed through an executive order by the governor in 2018.

That was after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.

17 students there were killed.

You were appointed as the commission chair.

You guys created a 124 page report.

Now the Governor is asking you to revisit that report just to make sure that the recommendations that were made then are still pertinent now.

Do you think that's necessary?

Yeah, I actually believe that following up on the work of the Commission is critically important.

You know, there were 19 commission members.

I'm personally very, very grateful to all the hard work that they put in, in framing our final report and coming up with the 30 recommendations.

30 recommendations.

However, I think it's important for us to identify all of the progress that we have made since our final report came out, because we've never stopped working on this issue.

And I also firmly believe that, you know, in the two or three years that there have been some things that have changed.

And being able to look at this particularly, you know, through the lens of like the circumstances of Vivaldi, Texas, and being able to sort of look at how we can actually make some additional changes and make some additional progress with our recommendations.

I guess I'm trying to get you to get into specifics.

You say things have changed.

Like what has changed since 2018?

Other than the obvious, there have been other shootings, other mass shootings.

Correct.

But what kind of things?

In regards to the recommendations that were made then might need to be revisited now.

Well, when I when I talk about things have changed, we've made progress.

You know, so there were certain things like, you know, being able to do behavioral threat assessment programs.

Well, the Criminal Justice Institutes, Arkansas Center for School Safety, we were able to get a Bureau of Justice assistance grant and we were able to provide behavioral threat assessment training for for our schools and site safety assessment.

We've passed a variety of laws.

We need to go back and look at those laws and to be able to see if there's anything that's critically important that wasn't included in those laws that we need to include in them now.

OK.

I want to talk about the laws in in just a few minutes.

But I also want to to talk with Superintendent Hopkins about something that you guys did, I guess, ten years ago in your school district in Clarksville, where you have actually taken teachers as well as some administrators, and you've arm them so that if an active shooter were to come into the school, you would have folks in there who have concealed carry weapons or concealed carry licenses and they have weapons and they can fight back.

That's right.

And we did that after Sandy Hook.

We felt like that we had a lot of good security measures in place.

But I feel like that we needed that failsafe, that if for some reason someone was able to actually get into that building, that we were able to respond from within the building from people that are there rather than help trying to come to the building.

And so that's what we put together.

And it is it is comprised of school administrators, teachers, but it's also any employee that we may have that we feel like has the aptitude and the ability to be trying to do that, that mission.

We've asked them to to help us.

How often do they have training?

We train every year.

We train multiple times throughout the year.

And in fact, we just finished a round of training this week.

So what is that training like?

We have live fire training where they handle their firearms on ranges along with scenarios on the range.

And then also we have what we call force on force training, where scenarios are played out within the school.

And you use simulations within the school.

These are done by by qualified police trainers.

The training that our people receive is the same training for active response, shooter response training.

That law enforcement receives.

OK, wow.

That's that's pretty impressive.

Which which brings up a topic that a lot of people, teachers, some of them have said, you know, they they feel uncomfortable being the designated person who is supposed to fight an active shooter.

So, you know, for Mike or Carol, maybe you guys can jump in on this.

What are teachers saying across the board?

I'm sure you know this is Arkansas, and there are lots of people who have concealed carry licenses.

But are you hearing from some teachers who specifically say, this is not my job?

I'm afraid to have to stand up to an active, active shooter?

That is exactly what our educators are saying.

They were trained to teach the children and what they want is more mental health services in our school.

Districts.

We need more school nurses, more counselors and more social workers within our schools.

And I know that that's something that came out of the commission's recommendations.

It also there's been laws regarding increased counselors in our schools and making sure that each of our schools has a school nurse, but not all of our school districts have social workers.

And we do need to increase mental health services for our children as well as for our staff.

Putting more guns into the schools is not the solution.

Providing safety measures and mental health support is what we truly need.

OK. Before we go further on this, I do want to clarify with the Clarksville school district, because you and I had this conversation prior to this broadcast, you made sure that the people who were chosen to have guns in the schools for protection were people who felt comfortable.

And you didn't impose that on just any teacher?

That's exactly right.

In fact, the ones that that are accepting that challenge and are doing the training, they they chose to do that.

It was it was not anything that they were required to do.

They do that because they also understand that at the end of the day, they're the ones that are there when this happens.

And they want to have the tools and the ability to and the training to fight back and to protect their kids.

In the best way possible.

But, you know, 11 of the things that came to mind and maybe, Mike, you can address this, what happens when a teacher or administrator is armed and things don't turn out well or as intended?

You know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, you know, society or, you know, citizens will look at that administrator or that teacher and say, why didn't you do this?

Why didn't you do that?

You had a gun.

Any thoughts about that?

I think that's exactly what you're you're seeing happening in Texas.

You know, looking back afterwards and saying, you know, what whether whether a in the in the security system.

You know, are there things that should be that could that should have been done?

And so I guess my response to that, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.

You know, I would agree with Darrell that some some educator, you know, might be concerned about programs such as the one that Dr. Hopkins and and his district But, you know, those are those are options that local district.

And they can make that decision themselves, not for you know, that the program that work.

You know, we have other districts around the state that have similar programs and their school.

They have we have some districts that that have the same type of personnel with training that the Clark folks have, but they are full time.

So yet that rather than, you know, teachers that carry that designation and also so, you know, there the variety of ways that you can improve school safety.

And, you know, all of those should be on the table, you know, when trying to address this issue.

Well, I will concur with some of the comment that Secretary Keith said.

You know, we have made a lot of progress, especially in the area of increasing security with additional SRO and additional commission school resource officer.

We've made a lot of improvements in, you know, school facilities and, you know, those follow on into two categories.

You have those facilities that have been built in the last decade or so that were designed with school safety in mind.

And they have a lot of, you know, feature events like then you have other schools that with facilities that were built decades ago.

And, you know, there they still may need some.

Do some work on their facility.

OK. And OK, one more.

When I got the microphone, I will say, will applaud Dr. May and her staff on the work that they have done as far as training, providing training across the state If you just look at their website for training this month, they have training for school resource officer They have training on identifying and preventing bullying.

They have youth mental health first aid training.

They have flight safety assessment and threat assessment training.

And those are all valuable resources for educators across the state.

OK.

Thanks for that.

And obviously, you're talking about the criminal Justice Institute, Dr. Cheryl May.

Obviously, that's a valuable tool in Arkansas to help folks across the board.

Just be prepared for for something like this.

Secretary Key, I'm wondering, though, are all of the schools in Arkansas do.

Do each school have armed security No, they don't.

One of the recommendations from 2018 was that every campus would have an armed presence.

I either during school hours or for extracurricular activities and we have made progress there.

But when you look at the number of school resource officers you know we I think it's 20% of our districts have a SRO on every campus.

You know my my kids were blessed to attend mountain home school district.

When I was in the legislature and we lived up there and there was a great partnership and you know the relations chips you saw with with the school resource officers there were some from the city police department, there were some from Baxter County Sheriff's Office and there it was a what I would consider a really a model situation.

And, you know, that's what I hope we could see in every community but there are challenges with that.

You know, our our our police departments, our sheriff's officers, you know, they have trouble finding and staffing those officer positions.

So it makes it more difficult if you can't keep patrol deputies or patrol officers out there to really identify those SRO.

So well, armed presence is is really something that would be our optimal situation.

It doesn't exist in every campus around the state.

OK. Dr. May, let's talk go back to the laws.

You mentioned before that there are laws that have been developed in Arkansas based on the recommendations from 2018.

What are some of them?

There were two laws passed in 2019 during the 2019 session.

One of them I think was Act 190, which focused on the issue of the amount of time that school counselors spend with students and increase that amount of time to 90%.

Then it was six x 629 of 2019 that focused on our recommendation for us to study and to look at the amount of or what we call forming institutional police departments.

And those are police departments, not at a local or county law enforcement agency, but just like our college campuses.

They can have a police department's so school districts are able to have a police department.

Then our major legislation was passed in the 20, 21 legislative session and that was act 551, six 2622 and 648.

And they were a companion bills because they were run.

The same bill was run through the House and the Senate because they both wanted to show how important school safety is to them as a as a group Two of those bills primarily focused on the issue of making sure that schools do comprehensive school safety audits.

And that's the interior of the building, the exterior of the building, but also went a little bit further than that.

And they wanted to have culture and climate, the culture and climate of the school also included in that.

It was in these bills that we also required that school counselors take youth mental health first aid and that it was a requirement that they do it every four years.

On the other side, the second group of bills primarily focused on the idea of school resource officers, as Secretary Kim mentioned, and school resource officers Most people will tell you I'm a very, very strong advocate for and I'm a strong advocate primarily because if they have an effective program, they can actually be prevention specialists and help us reduce the potential for violence in our schools, that they're just not there for the law enforcement activity.

They're there to be prevention specialists, to mentor and and counsel these kids and also to provide educational resources for them.

And if they do that, then they can make a major difference in many of our kids.

And I know that we're very blessed to have a number of extraordinary school resource officers in Arkansas that make a difference in kids lives.

Every day.

But we also wanted to make sure that there was adequate training involved and not just for them, but also for the superintendents and the supervisors of those individuals.

Because when you look at SARS nationally, one of the things that you hear is that, you know, the pipeline from from school to prison and sorrows are sometimes blamed for that.

But it was never intended to be that way.

And oftentimes in those incidents that sorrows are being acts to intervene in situations they shouldn't.

So it was really important in these laws that we make it clear that SRO should not be involved in discipline.

And the staff and the administrators also have to take training.

And then finally, the SRO have to take youth mental health first aid.

And they also have to have a memorandum of understanding, a model and M.O.

U.

Implemented between the local agency and the and the school district.

You gave us a lot of information there I wonder, though, overall, are you pleased, even though these laws have been passed and they enable school districts to do these some of these things that you mentioned, are you pleased with what you're seeing based on the recommendations?

And what would you like to see changed?

Yes, I'm very pleased on what we've been able to accomplish.

I know secretaries, secretary, key staff in the Department of Element Division of Elementary and Secondary Education.

You know, through the work that Dr. Betsy Kendall and the Aware program have focused quite a bit on mental health.

OK, We're also requiring school resource officers to focus on youth mental health first aid.

There's also a program at UMC that we collaborate with at the Arkansas Center for School Safety that focuses on trauma informed response in schools These are the kind of things that can make a huge difference in a kid's life.

OK. Over time.

Carol Fleming, I want to bring you back in and let's let's talk about what teachers what you're hearing from teachers.

And you touched on that a little bit.

I also noticed every time Dr. May would talk about mental health you were shaking your head in agreement with that.

Any thoughts about this?

And specifically, though, what what are teachers telling you and the other thing I want to touch on, too, is bullying, because oftentimes when these students go into a school with guns, it there is a connection to them.

Having said that, at some point they were bullied, ridiculed, that sort of thing.

So very good points that you've brought up.

And yes, I definitely was shaking my head in agreement with the fact that the laws that were changed for our school counselors and that school counselors, the time that they had direct interaction with students was increased to 90%.

The other thing, though, is that you have counselors, you have one counselor for a certain number of students and we really need to have that number of students to counselor reduced so that we can have more interactions and allow the school counselor to be able to effectively counsel the children with which they are charged to to care for.

The other thing is that yes, the school resource officer presence in our schools that has increased.

The the premise behind that in that they are to work as mentors is really a good thing for our school communities and also for our communities in which we live in order to have safe schools, we have to have safe communities.

And we also need to ensure that our students know that our school resource officers and our police officers are actually someone with whom they can communicate.

They can see them as a mentor.

They can confide in them.

That is so important.

And then that would address the mental health issues, the bullying, because we need our children to know that they are safe and that the educators, not just classroom teachers, but the educators within our school districts are there to provide them the safety, the nurturing, the health and wellness that they need in order to feel safe and secure in our schools.

OK, David Hopkins, we're down to our last few minutes.

I want to come back to you in the Clarksville school district, where you have 20 administrators and teachers who are armed.

When you look back on what you guys have been doing over the last ten years, is there anything that you feel you need to do differently at this point?

Well, speaking from a state level, what I think we we did a great job with the commission.

We put a great toolbox together, and those recommendations went to the legislature They met they passed some really good legislation.

I think the the final component that I think we really need to look at is the funding.

And so I think that we need to come back and look at look at these ideas and these these these different methods that we have available to us now.

Now we need to look at how can we better fund schools so that they can implement these these items that we have available for them.

Mm hmm.

There is expected to be a surplus in the state of Arkansas that could be put to use for some of these things.

Secretary Key, do you think that will happen?

Have and Governor Hutchinson has said that that is an area he wants to make a priority, and he has asked me to provide him some information of how we can accelerate some of these recommendation.

And use surplus dollars for that.

So, yes, that will be a key part of the conversation.

OK.

I think we're probably at about a minute.

30 left in our broadcast with five people here.

You want to get everyone a chance to to say something.

But I think what's missing right now is what we need to say to parents specifically.

Some of them are still afraid to send their kids to school.

They they worry about that.

Is there anything that can be said as we wrap up that can maybe put some parents minds at ease?

We have about one minute left.

I'm anyone who wants to jump in on this right now.

Go ahead.

Well, I think that I think we've been working very hard.

As we said, you know, earlier, Clarksville started this ten years ago.

So we have been I think schools all across this state.

The Department of Education are leaders in our state.

We've been working very hard to try to keep our kids safe.

And we're continuing to do that.

And I think we've made a lot of progress over the years with that.

OK, when can we see new recommendations, Dr. May?

I think we're going to start convening the commission again in the very, very near future.

And in speaking with the governor, he wanted us to have our recommendations done by the time they do the special session that could be very soon.

Yes, that could be in August.

But the good thing is you have a great foundation, as we mentioned earlier.

So now is just maybe tightening up a few over there.

And I think parents should be very reassured that, as Dr. Hopkins said, that we have worked very, very hard, OK, in making sure that that our kids are safe, OK?

All right.

And that is going to do it for this discussion.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Dana Terrell.

We'll see you next time.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUAR FM 89.