By Brian Besch
[email protected]
The deadliest school shooting of 2024 killed four and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. Wednesday. The school located about an hour northeast of Atlanta lost two students and two teachers when a 14-year-old student opened fire.
What steps are taken to keep these actions out of Polk County? We asked Livingston ISD superintendent Dr. Brent Hawkins what his district is doing in an exclusive interview Friday morning.
“It always registers with me like being hit with a truck,” Hawkins said of school shootings. “When you look at it, it is easy to say there are two educators that lost their lives and two students that lost their lives. That is absolutely a tragedy, but it ripples and goes beyond that. You’ve got staff and children that have lost a loved one. There are survivors of that tragedy as well, and them fearing for their lives. I keep playing in my head the little boy named Marques Coleman that went viral. That 14-year-old boy was shielded by one of his teachers. The teacher laid on top of him and then they found a bullet in his laptop computer in his backpack. That’s how close to death that young man was. The emotional scars from that are going to be left for some time. That weighs heavy on me and runs through my mind.
“We have to look at the root causes of it. I think parents need to know the things that we do to ensure that we are providing the safest possible environment for our students. I’m definitely not a politician, and I pride myself on not being, so nothing I say is going to be political. The problem that we have today is that none of these children that are participating in the school shootings have been profiled or identified as a child who is full of love. They are wanting connection. It isn’t a school problem; it is a societal problem.
“We have a society today that has evil in it and this evil has been spawned by our reaction to what is going on in the world around us. I grew up pre-Columbine, and Columbine is the watermark that started all this. It is progressively getting worse. From my standpoint, if you took every gun out of the United States, we’ve still got a problem. We are still going to have mass murders – regardless of if guns are there or not – until we address the heart of the problem. Kids have to feel love, they have to feel connected to something.
“We are selling kids a false notion about discipline and values don’t matter. That couldn’t be further from the truth. That is one of the greatest disservices we can have. Children need values, and I am blessed to work in a district that still tries to teach those values. When we talk to employers today, the greatest issue they have in trying to prepare our students for employment after school is those soft skills. Their employees don’t show up, let alone on time. They really don’t want to adhere to the standards of the company, whether it is a dress code or whatever. So, our district tries hard to teach those values.”
Hawkins says teaching those values goes beyond the classroom, and those lessons are also needed in the home. LISD designates a large amount of funds engaging students through character education to help everyone feel included.
“What they are craving isn’t found on a digital screen. I am saying that from an instructional leader that believes we need a tool in every child’s hand that can prepare them, because all of our jobs today require some level of digital competence. Our kids have to have those skills, but they also can’t lose the skill of connection to one another as human beings. Our kids are getting lost in cell phones. As a society, we need to make sure we are disciplining our kids to say that they only get so much screen time. Outside of that, they need to run and play and be in the outdoors and love your neighbor and fellow human being.
“We are overtly trying to teach character education to our kiddos and how to interact with one another. That program goes all throughout our schools. It tries to make them feel a part of something. That is a lesson. Just like we teach English, we are teaching character education.
“There is feedback that we look at with surveys the kids take, our parents take, and our staff takes to look at how we are doing in that respect. Do they have people they can go and talk to? Is our staff engaging our kids from a social aspect? Are we greeting them at the classroom door? Are we making them feel loved and glad to be here?”
Hawkins said the character program is something LISD initiated, but that the school district is not alone. Most districts around the state are attempting to be proactive in engaging students.
“We have to quit using the conversation of guns and start using the conversation of what we need to do to ensure we are growing the next generation of mentally healthy students. Society always wants to blame somebody and point the finger. It is truly something everybody has to take responsibility for.”
LISD has extended measures to ensure safety for its students while at school. The superintendent said the school district treats issues like the events in Georgia as something that can happen on their campus.
“You listen to all these incidents of shootings in public schools and you see someone in an interview that will say, ‘We just didn’t think it would happen here.’ We have tried to approach it as it can happen here.
“I know parents don’t want their kids taught in an environment like sending them to the Polunsky Unit in order to educate them. There has to be a balance between access, freedoms, as well as a line drawn in the sand to protect children.
“When we talk about kids who have made threats – since school started, we’ve had a couple of instances of young folks that have made poor choices. The shooter in Georgia made a threat already to the school, then he denied it. The thing that we don’t do in our school – as long as I am superintendent of this school, we are going to take you at your word. If you make a threat, then we are going to hold you accountable under the penal code and under the student code of conduct to the fullest extent possible.
“We are doing what we can to establish positive relationships, but the student that goes out at an age of accountability and makes a threat toward the school district or staff, we are going to hold them accountable. I know there are people that have different opinions, and they have the right to those opinions. We are going to be sure that we hold our kids accountable, because students need accountability in this day and time.”
Hawkins also mentioned that staff undergoes immense training with teams on every campus that are trained in behavioral threat assessment and management.
“All of these school shooters, there is some antecedent that happens, whether it is a post on Facebook or a prior threat. After the fact, you can trace that back and say that happened and everybody should have known. Our staff has done a Herculean job, and we have been able to deal with some of our students’ behaviors way before it ever got bad. That is crucial in moving forward that we do those things.”
The district performs exercises such as active shooter drills, intruder drills, and there are policies in place where the perimeter remains locked. Law enforcement also performs drills within the school hallways. Online, there is software that provides digital threat assessments.
Livingston ISD just received its first K-9 school-based officer, Hinu, which Hawkins says has been a desire for nearly a decade. When he arrived at LISD, there were two school-based officers. Today, there are nine officers for its seven campuses. The state pays around $100,000 for those officers, and the school district picks up the remaining tab, which sits at around $500,000.
The high school has two school resource officers to cover nearly 250,000 square feet. All officers perform door checks and interact with students throughout the school day.
“School security today is just as much a necessity as air conditioning. We have to have those school resource officers, and I know there are some folks that have done some ‘poor boy’ approaches and got guardian plans. I think the maximum amount of protection and the thing that fits our school district is to have those trained officers that have sworn a duty. You saw in Georgia that it was what stopped killing more people.
“We don’t have a TSA scenario where you walk through metal detectors, but we do have staff that are monitoring the doorways as students come in. I am very interested in adding an additional school-based officer K-9 for gunpowder detection.”
When asked what a threat at Livingston ISD looks like, Hawkins said they are all unique. They range anywhere from verbal, online or found on school-issued laptop devices. Threats can be handled in a variety of manners, from school staff to even the FBI, which occurred in one situation at Livingston.
The threats do not begin and end with the school day. The school district has been out past midnight trying to resolve problems. They also seem to occur in waves, where those issuing threats are looking for attention.
“When they hear of one student do it, you have a couple of copycats that think they want that attention. I can assure them that attention they are seeking would be a whole lot better going and talking to one of our staff members or counselors, because none of those situations end well.
“In the last couple of weeks, we had a couple of threats. We are transparent with parents as much as possible. There are always confidentiality laws in place for students and staff. We release the information that we can. Prior to the Georgia shooting, we had two threats. We email parents and let them know, like last week it got posted on one of the social media sites. Everybody had an opinion on it, and a lot of people think we are too heavy-handed, but then it gets followed up by what happened in Georgia. That kind of resets people’s thought process.
“We want to find a simple solution to a complex problem, and it is not there. It is not going to be at the ballot box on Nov. 5. Whoever is elected president or whatever political decision you want to put out there, these things are going to continue to occur. In all honesty, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is going to have a whole lot less impact on the solutions than us in these communities. We need to put our phones down and go back to the old Biblical principle of loving our neighbor.”
Comment
Comments