>> The horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 school children along with 2 teachers.

Dead is refreshing.

Conversations about action against gun violence.

I talked with the Kentucky Education commissioner and school safety officials about how safe our Kentucky schools and what can be done to make them even safer.

That's now on connections.

Thank you for joining us for connections again today.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you.

You know, last week we talked to a mass shooting survivor Whitney Austin about her experience and her calls for action and policy proposals to finally do something about gun violence.

Well, I had a chance earlier this week to speak to Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass about this very issue.

And here's what he had to say.

Commissioner Glass, we appreciate a few minutes of your time.

>> Glad to be here with you in a any time.

>> Yes, sorry, it's under such but I do want to get your reaction because you have an experience that many people may not know about that can really how many people are viewing this evolve Day elementary school shooting that killed 19 innocent children and 2 teachers.

>> All right.

Well, before returning to Kentucky, I was the superintendent in Jeffco, which as wonderful community in place to It's the Western sort of suburbs of the Denver area.

But one distinction and has is that it includes Columbine High School, which but many folks point to as the sort of genesis are beginning of this hole school shootings and what happened there and the districts also had 2 other school shootings in its history.

And when I came to Kentucky brought with a colleague Thomas Woods, Tucker, and he was the superintendent Douglas County just south of Jeffco that while he was superintendent they had a school shooting at the STEM charter school.

So we bring those experiences here.

Both him from managing an active shooter situation.

It, of course, when I was at Columbine happened many years before, but got to see the the recovery and just continuing management of that grieving and wound.

The community never really get over that experience.

You.

>> So when you heard about what happened in Texas, what was your first thought?

Well, I think I'm processing it like a human being just like everyone else as you're horrified and heartbroken.

And when the reports first start coming out, you hope that the >> loss of life damages a mitigated as possible.

But goodness, that reports just kept coming.

It kept getting worse and I kept thinking we're on the path toward another Sandy hook situation.

Just given the ages of the of the children.

It was happening at an elementary school and the death toll continued to rise.

And then I started processing through again, many of the same things I think other people do.

What could have happened to prevent us getting to the situation.

And then just as a former school administrator thinking through what were the procedures that were in was where the early warnings where they acted upon.

What sort protections did this the school system have in the event of an active shooter in terms of I'm human, I'm the building protections, things to physically secure the a behavioral things that you train staff and students to do in the event of an active shooter.

What happened when the police responded and what what was that situation?

How quickly could they get medical care?

They're all of those sort of logistical considerations.

Where they are now is really thinking about this process of grieving in recovery, which is going to take to for for this community to move on from it and never will fully heal.

>> For many parents and educators who watch this unfold and school was just letting out here in Kentucky as well.

What would you say to reassure them that Kentucky schools are safe or perhaps?

>> I statistically school is one of the safest places in a child can So you look injuries or how children get hurt in school, in spite of the sort epidemic of school shootings continues happen.

Schools are really safe place for students and Kentucky's done some good things when it comes to school safety a couple of years ago in the wake of the Marshall County the Legislature passed the Senate bill, one of the school Safety and Resiliency Act which took a lot of steps statewide to put in place a system of support and ensure that we have basis of school safety around That was that was a good step.

They continue to look at elements school resource officers who I think can be a tremendous positive impact on school.

Clearly we've seen from the Stoneman Douglas shooting.

They're not a There are lots of things that can go wrong.

All of the systems have weaknesses that can be exploited, especially if people don't follow through on what they are supposed to do.

So the SRO by itself is not a panacea, but even this past session, while the legislature took action to get an SRO in buildings, the field to put the funding with that to make it actually happen or the supports that are necessary to train police officers to be to sorrows.

You can just take any cop and put them in the building and expect that to be successful to different mentality and mindset.

If you have a police officer that becomes part of the school community and he's a supportive part of the kids and the staff in the building.

It's a different mindset that requires a different kind of training.

So we need to supports to create sorrows and we need the resources to actually put them in building if we want to achieve the results that I think the Legislature hope for with the bill last year.

>> There may be some renewed calls to arm school personnel, teachers, administrators.

What do you think of that?

>> I really don't like this idea on a number of And I think it starts we're not hearing from teachers that they want responsibility it is a perishable skill to have to this on a continuous basis.

And if we look at shootings that I'm a trained law enforcement have on a regular basis.

They don't always hit their targets.

And so you have someone who has minimal training and minimal and not the mindset to be carrying a gun into a hostile situation that you're asking to pull that out and engage with the shooter I think a lot of things can go The other thing is law enforcement after Columbine, one of the one of the lessons that we learned in column by that I think was repeated an error that was repeated in Texas is that law enforcement is trained when there's an act of sheer you breach the building and you engage the shooter.

That was something that happened in Columbine.

You can remember those hours.

We watch that unfold and students climbing out of windows and trying to get out of the building that change the procedures for law enforcement.

After that.

Now they're taught you engage.

That clearly didn't happen in Texas.

But one of the problems that you can have a few the staff inside the building is when the law enforcement peers and breaches the building, you have a bunch of people with guns inside.

They don't know who the shooter is and who isn't.

That is a significant problem that I don't think you have an answer for.

I think weapons and protection and hardening schools has a place that an important part of this conversation.

In addition to getting upstream and thinking about how we can prevent the situation from happening in the first place.

Hardening the school is an important part of the conversation but I think I'm expecting a classroom teacher to have this responsibility and then carry executed, carry it out in a hostile situation.

There's a little far fetched more than a little farfetched.

>> What do you mean by carrying it upstream?

Because we have talked about the hardening, a J R D and the hardening of school.

So the soft, the emotional skills, et cetera.

Is that what you mean when you made about how do you broach this from an upstream perspective?

Yes, so well, almost all of these cases where we look at the shooter and that it is true with the Texas shooter as well.

You see lots of in advance of the act.

That gives you warning signals that something bad is about to happen.

>> And do we have systems in place where that can be reported and then acted on.

And there's a clear a set of accountability or follow up for those sorts of actions.

Kentucky has a system that's designed to do that.

The stop tip it needs a lot more attention.

It needs more resources.

It needs to be better known.

But following Columbine again in Colorado, one of the things that was put in place, there was a system called safe to tell that we are well resourced and people knew about it.

And it was a way that you could a questionable behavior and went to a dispatcher and the dispatcher then investigated it and then sent a copy to the school superintendent or their designee in law enforcement.

You had to follow up unresolved that show that you've taken some action that was stored and logged as well.

All of these are steps we can take to get upstream as well as providing a stronger mental supports.

We talk about having 250 counselors for student has a goal ratio.

We're a long way from that.

And again, if the legislature in the state has that as a priority, we have to provide the resources and the personnel to actually make that happen.

>> And that was a part of the original SB One from 2019 that made that ratio.

Of course, it was.

That was a negotiated number.

But we're still nowhere close to matching matter.

Some districts doing better than others.

>> Well, you you put schools in the position of making these really wicked Do you want 35 kindergartners in the classroom or do you want to add another counselor or do you want to have a an intervention?

That's because you know, your students are behind because of COVID.

These are the kinds of wicked choices that schools have to make on a regular basis.

And so I think appropriating the resource to allow for us to have both the proactive in the case of of an active shooter.

Have the resources available in the school so that we can respond proactively and in that I'm a terrible us a situation that they are there.

>> Of the 525 million dollars at the Kentucky General Assembly appropriated to local school districts.

I I think primarily for teacher raises.

Do you think this becomes a part of how that money is doled out?

>> I think going especially in environment.

We've got to look more at not only the hardening of schools, as you say, but even more emphasis on the upstream.

How can we get to greater mental health supports bolstering that system of early reporting and the intervention so that we can get get ahead of these things before they happen again in the case of the Texas shooter.

And if you look at most school and mass murderers who have come to this point.

The signs were all there.

The signs were all there and they were ignored or inappropriately.

And so what can we do to make sure that that's not happening is an important question.

>> Well, Commissioner Jason Glass, thank you for your perspective and your time.

Thank you.

Our thanks to Doctor Jason Glass.

The commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Education for talking with us about how Kentucky schools are broaching.

The topic and concern of school safety coming up here on connections in just a second.

I have a conversation with to school safety officials, John Akers, who runs the Kentucky Center for School Safety and Ben Wilcox, who is the Kentucky school security safety Marshall.

That's coming up.

Well, welcome, John Acres and Mister Ben Wilcox, thank you for being here.

I'm sorry is under such unfortunate circumstances, but thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Very welcome.

Thank you.

I do want to start by just helping people understand what Kentucky is doing to keep Kentucky schools, the teachers, the parents, the staff, the kids safe.

And Mister Akers, I'll begin with you because we've made legislation laws that date back to maybe even before the Marshall County High School shooting.

That happened in 2018, 2019 legislation was passed.

Is that keeping Kentucky kids and students and teachers safe enough.

I think it's making some great strides.

We started as >> early as 1998.

After the Heat high school shooting.

It happened in December 1997. and the General established the Kentucky Center for School Safety, which an agency that's designed to provide as much help to our public schools as possible in training resources and things like that.

Then after the shooting that occurred as Sandy Hook Senate Bill 8 past.

But the General Assembly in 2013 that added more legislation and more requirements for safety issues in our schools.

And then, of course, after the Marshall County shooting, the school safety resiliency accent but want to send a bill late that even gave us more.

And that is more walls to be able to try to keep our schools just a little safer than they have been in the past.

>> And it established the state School safety which is your position.

Tell us what you do.

>> Well, this gold school safety resilience yet create our position, too.

Do on site reviews and risk assessments on every local school district in the state of Kentucky.

We have 15 compliance officers.

3 of them are supervisors, 12 of them, our actual compliance officers that are located regionally throughout the state.

Each compliance officer has about 120 schools.

A piece and we walk in and do risk assessments on every school in the state of Kentucky, at least once a year, sometimes because we also provide training.

Our job is almost like a health inspector, a fire inspector, except we're going in and making sure the mandates that are set forth by the school safety was a TEA Act are being followed.

We also are there is a referee source that if a school needs you tuned up on safety or has questions about it, we can assist and then we can also push those questions over to this Kentucky Center for school safety to have them assist the school's.

We also required to come out with a report every year.

We did our first report last year.

That shows where we're at and in the state of Kentucky.

What resources are needed word.

We need to go to make school safer.

We've been doing this for 3 years.

We're on our 3rd risk right now.

And the biggest thing is our compliance officers have a phenomenal relationship with the schools that if they have a question, they can call someone that can be on their doorstep within 24 hours to a system right?

>> With a lot of times we talked about the 2019 school safety and resiliency.

Add to Mister Akers.

We often heard the term hardening the schools, but there's another.

I think another term that both of you prefer.

But what do we mean by that?

>> Well, there are 2 camps.

What I call the hardware and the hardware But there are some where the hardware, right, right?

The hardware side of it is basically or access control.

That's the term you're looking for how we're going to make sure that our schools are secure as possible.

Exterior doors locked and that the front door to be monitored electronically and have people come in to be sure that they are checking in to see what they're doing, making sure that they are there for legitimate reasons.

And then the other side of this equation is the mental health side of this issue.

And there are so many children that have issues long before COVID even came into play that need help.

Now schools are served as kind like triage units.

We identify some of these issues, but we're not trained to be able to handle it.

And so that's, you know, therefore, we get in contact with our mental health care providers in our communities.

And we try to send parents to them with their children safe.

We can't just get some of these issues resolved.

>> So do we know that schools are complying?

Mister Wilcox with making sure exterior doors are locked and that those are now mandates is not permissive language.

It's a requirement.

>> From a report last we were in the high 90's with with a a 90 percentile of compliance.

And we also see with this year reported even going to be better.

But the high 90's is not good enough for school safety.

We have to be 100% all the time.

The end.

That's one of the reasons why we do on site reviews.

This isn't a phone call that says, hey, all your doors locked, our compliance officers going in and rattling each They're checking next here.

Doors.

If we get a call and complain on the school, this is where the doors are open will go look and see if you will, will combat that with not only putting in a report, an insane will have to be back for a reassessment to get this fixed.

We'll come back and talk to all your staff and explain to them why this is so important.

We've got so many teachers that may have not had that mindset of why we need to lock doors.

And that's great that they've never needed that mindset.

But we have to have that mindset now because it's the safety of our kids.

So just going in and having one of our compliance officer saying it's an extra layer security.

This is why we lock the exterior doors were locked into your doors and it clicks and goes.

I see why.

I'll tell you one of our helpers, as we should say in school safety and our kids.

Our kids know those doors need to be a lot when Miss Gabbert doesn't shuttered or, you miss gathered, the door's not closed.

It supposed to be close.

Those are some of our best to help.

First when it comes to school safety or parents coming in and saying, well, it was too easy for me to get in.

We need to work on this.

And that's what our office is there to do him.

>> What lessons have you learned just from the information that we know so far about you've all day?

What are you taking a close look at to say, OK, maybe we need to tweak some of our policy, some of our laws to make sure that we can't prevent to the greatest extent possible.

That incident from happening in Kentucky.

>> I think that I've been hearing in the news media basically talked about exterior doors being breached, mentor in and interior doors being breached.

And like Ben just mentioned, our access control laws require those things to be in place here in Kentucky.

So I think that we should be pretty good there.

But like Ben said, it's not 100% and that needs to be closer to 100% on that.

>> What about metal detectors in every school?

Metal detectors AR is window dressing.

It sets a standard for the school.

They're all going through the front doors are all being checked.

But what about the side doors?

What about the windows?

What about after school?

I was a high school principal for years.

The door state wide open after 3 o'clock for all activities.

So if somebody wanted to get a weapon in there or contraband and there they could do it.

Built partly on just coming through the front door at 8 o'clock in the we find that that the best tool out there is the relationship between the teacher and the kid that the child really feels that the teacher cares for them.

Then they're going to say, hey, I'm hearing something that I don't think sounds right.

Maybe someone's got a gun.

Someone's got a knife.

Someone's got some dope, whatever the case may be.

The teacher can look into Taken to the administrator, take it to their sorrow and to be involved with that.

So at National your Bill module asking former under Secretary of education charge of safe and drug-free schools.

We'll tell you the same thing that it's the relationships that really help prevent.

Think more.

So the metal detectors or, you know, any other kind of a door stops that you might be having.

>> The legislature this past time passed a law.

Mister Wilcox, the require school resource officers in every school.

And if they're not able to accommodate that for financial reasons are finding the personnel need to work with the UN and the Center for School Safety to come up with a plan.

Do you think that that would such an episode where they've all day as we learned that perhaps there was some hesitation there and what kind of training our SRO is getting to build those relationships with kids?

>> Well, yes, the hbr House bill 63 was just passed it that requires a SRO for every campus in the state of Kentucky by August.

First 2022 and less, there's funding or personnel issues for that school as our office will be putting out surveys to the schools to find out a lot of different information.

How many sro's do you have?

How suroeste you need what you're going to take funding wise for that.

sorrows, are you having trouble finding personnel?

So we have some school districts that have the money but can't find the personnel.

And we have some school districts don't have the money.

And so we really need to really nail down what's going on the state to get to that point coming from SRO background.

I was SRO starting in 1999.

After Columbine the state of Kentucky is implemented 120 hours where the certification sro's.

That's 3 weeks for that rain over a three-year period of time.

The training is absolutely phenomenal.

I can't find another state that has that much for certification and it works its way in from mental health for our officers working with the, you know, special needs kids working with all different types of mental health procedures.

And if you ask yes, or what do I need to be trained?

Almost it's had a deal with mental health with special needs.

That's where they want their training and it works its way into what I call the tip of the spear training, where you're actually learning about rapid deployment.

You're working with rap diploma, active shooter training because most rose are your resource for the kids, their friends, those kids.

But if someone comes in that school, they've got to beat the tip of the spear to protect those So it's absolutely amazing what we've got going in state of Kentucky when it comes as our train.

I'm very proud to be part of that >> program.

And as you know, that was quite controversial.

The conversations around that particularly in communities where there is some schism between the law enforcement community and the kids who are being served by law What do you say to that?

>> Well, again, going back to be an SRO when you're working with those kids, those kids are your baby's nose.

When you take care of, there were a lot of kids.

I think John even brought this up.

A lot of kids that didn't have a relationship with their teachers or principles or people like that.

But they had a relationship with me is SRO a lot of times because I understood where they came from.

I worked a row to and I'd be in these kids houses and they come talk to me.

Well, you know what happened last night?

You know, this and they had a special relationship just I was a law enforcement officer.

And if you want to work with the community and heal the community, when you have issues like this, you put SRO an elementary school and those kids see what they're there for what they're really there for.

And that's to protect them.

>> One of the things that we constantly hear is that in many of these cases, if not most of these cases of a school shooting that the school shooter had leak some information that on the other side, hindsight is 2020 that clued people and that this was coming.

So what is the lesson we need to learn?

Mister Acres from that?

>> Well, the lessons we've learned is that we need to approach school shooting as a community issue.

Number one, we receive issues that are out in the community when the coming through the front doors of the school.

So after shooting is going on in the community, there's possibly going to be shooting.

That's going to happen in a school drugs outside drugs inside.

You get the idea what I'm saying So if you this is a golden opportunity for the communities to really bond together and talking to parents.

I'm talking the faith community.

I'm talking the private sector, people, the businesses, whatever, and come up with a way to publicize how they can get information to us.

We have a statewide tip line is called a stop.

Tip line is in partnership with the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security and Kentucky Center for School Safety.

It runs 24 7.

You can text messaging can cure COVID.

You email or you can make a phone call and there's somebody there.

24 7 and will receive the call.

So if something's being lake down, here's an obvious way to do this.

Now we run into a public relations issue with this with this concerns.

Not enough.

People know that number.

And so we're thinking about possibly having a major campaign with community folks saying, OK, let's get these numbers out, maybe and restaurants with these little messages that you have on your tables.

Maybe a poster Kroger's, maybe something over watering something over here at the Civic Center.

Whatever the case may be saturate the market with that tip line, that would be one possible piece to the puzzle of getting that information to us.

But we need to have people to step forward and let us know what you're hearing and especially social media.

Excuse me.

I mean, this is by which a lot of the communication is.

>> Is is learned and transmitted.

And so if you see something, say something, Mister Wilcox, right?

And there's nothing that's 2 smaller in consequential.

And it doesn't mean that you're indicting someone.

You're just alerting authorities that, hey, you might want to keep our eyes on this.

Is that the correct way to look at the absolutely.

And you know, we saw it whenever we have a tragedy like this.

We see an uptick of that.

>> You know, when I when I start as right after Columbine, we've got a lot of information from the community.

We've got information from parents.

We've got information of what I feel like, you know, this students acting this way or that way.

And then it suddenly Wayne's off, you know, and that same thing happen with more.

So we were very, very focused on school safety.

And then it starts to wane off.

And this is one of the things and this is why it's so important.

Our offices in the school's yearly or more.

It's a constant reminder that this has to be done.

This has to get out.

So yeah, I could agree completely with you on that.

But I if I could have listened to that.

I get the messages that are sent to the home office, Homeland Security.

So I get to see what's been coming in.

I'll say probably 60% of those deal with mental health issues.

Kids considering suicide kids who are friends of friends that are cutting one things like this, that it's something >> we really need to reach out and get to these kids Would you call when a police officer goes into a House wellness check.

We're at the wellness And to be sure that these kids are OK, cause a lot of the kids.

I'm not being supervised in their And so we need to be able to have somebody to come out there and say, are you OK?

but so it's just not about school shooters.

It's about mental health issues as well.

Yeah.

>> And everybody keeping our eyes being vigilant.

If you see something or hear something, say something right.

>> If I could, there is just so much about relationship that there's anything to be taken from its relationships, relationship with the community relationship with law enforcement.

You know, we have a program here.

The state of Kentucky called handle with care and we're one the only states in the country that is statewide.

And that's a system set up.

So an officer goes into a home saying on Tuesday night and there's been some type of traumatic event with a student.

They can relays the information to the schools, the e-mail and all it is is to say handle with care for this child.

And I have a wife.

It's a counselor at elementary school.

They get a heads up the next day that a child's come in that may have had some trauma.

That's where you start.

And you know, that doesn't say anything about what happened.

But, you know, when my wife or someone else goes in to start to get him some love, that's when it all comes out.

And if we can help people that way, that summer started so simple.

So simplistic that just having those relationships is phenomenal.

>> Do you think they'll be an ask a final question that you will present to the General Assembly when they reconvene in 2023 as a result of what we've seen and you've all day and God forbid there be another incident at the beginning of the school year.

This fall.

>> Well, we'll look at lessons learned number one and see if we have any areas that we need to tweak.

But I been and I share the same thought that we want people to move from.

Just been compliant to the law to having that commitment.

To these laws into these regulations into these before to be a way of life, so to speak in the schools where they have to think twice about, you know, what we're doing with situational awareness where we're worried about who's going to come in through the front door.

We know it's going to be checked.

We know the exterior doors going to be locked.

So if we can move from, they just compliance Checkoff list from his shop to all of our educators saying this is the way life is going to be in our school forever, I think will be a lot better down the road.

>> Then within what we've seen in 3 years of doing this is that you have a lot of school systems that they took it to heart immediately.

And we going to do our compliance checks.

It's very, very easy because it's a way of life.

Like you said, it's a commitment and we're getting to that point.

We've done it only for 3 years.

Sounds like a long time.

It's really not especially throw in a pandemic in the middle But we're getting to that point where people are used to getting checked in.

We have a lot of pushback from people.

Why can't I come into my school or was this person check-in, mayor?

I know that person.

Why let them in and it now that it's coming to pass.

And of course, now we have this issue that's just come up where people are saying we know why we do this now and it needs to be this way.

>> Well, thank you for that.

And thank you for all the work that you do to help keep Kentucky school safe or safer.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

We thank you for joining us for this conversation on connections today.

You can keep in touch with me on Twitter and on Facebook.

Listen to previous programs of Connections on