After Oxford: Battle Creek area schools, police share responsibility of safety
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts around the country continue to inch back to normal.
Part of that normal includes the resumption of active shooter trainings, a stark reality for students and educators in the 21st century.
In the wake of the Oxford High School shooting — and amid new challenges brought on by the pandemic and a rise in social media threats — school districts across the nation are reassessing how they keep their students and staff safe.
While school safety measures have been in place and updated for decades, the Oxford shooting and resulting charges against the shooter's parents have brought to light the shared responsibility of school violence prevention. Meanwhile, a wave of school closures due to copycat threats has shed light on the ease with which a student can disrupt a learning environment.
Battle Creek area school districts and local law enforcement say they are continuously adapting how they respond to potential threats, but it takes a network of people to protect schools.
“It is a community effort," said Lakeview Schools Superintendent Blake Prewitt. "It's your community mental health services with the police department, child protective services and the schools."
But, Prewitt added, "the thing that is most worrisome is there are gaps. If a student is unable to attend school based on an assessment but they haven't done anything illegal, but the parents are unwilling to get the help the student needs, the school can’t do anything and the police can't do anything at that point. That's always my worry: the kids caught in the middle."
Active shooter trainings have evolved
With most schools moving to remote or hybrid learning during the 2020-21 school year, school shootings declined nationally, with 10 reported in 2020.
There have been at least 29 school shootings in 2021, including Nov. 30 in Oxford, the suburb 35 miles north of Detroit where four students were killed and seven were injured.
Michigan law requires all school districts to prepare an emergency plan which must be reviewed and updated every year.
Calhoun County Sheriff Steve Hinkley has run active shooter trainings in schools for 10 years. He said the practice was paused by many districts during the pandemic, but remains a vital tool for keeping schools safe.
“Buildings change, entry points change, loading docks might change," Hinkley said. "You should go through buildings and everything should be assessed."
Active shooter trainings also evolve as tactics used in school shootings change.
Tactics like hiding under desks have morphed into instruction to run, hide or fight using common sense and critical thinking. Staff and students are taught to have a strategy before running.
“Gunshots in a big building echo, and it's hard to determine where they are," Hinkley said. "Just running is not the solution. And just hiding is not the solution. You need to prepare yourself in case there is a confrontation.”
Hinkley doesn't discuss the specifics of active shooter trainings and doesn't recommend disclosing some tactics to students, since one of those students could later become the active shooter.
“I am more of an advocate to teach the staff members to be a guide for their students,” he said. “Use the children to help you, but the teacher should be the guide ... They need to have a plan so when law enforcement arrives, they can pull out the plan, unify and know what we are doing.”
Role of police liaisons in schools
Hinkley and Battle Creek Police Chief Jim Blocker believe an important component of school safety is assigning a police officer to a school.
“They deal with security and make recommendations and provide staff training," said Hinkley. "But SROs (school resource officers) are more, and they help kids with life skills that many are not getting from their parents.”
For a time, law enforcement was a primary focus for school resource officers. But Blocker said "for the last 20 years the focus has been on education, mentorship, and working with students as a preventive measure. That is more squarely where we want to be.”
All four Battle Creek area public school districts have officers assigned. Battle Creek and Lakeview have city police, Pennfield has a sheriff deputy and the school resource officer at Harper Creek is from the Emmett Township Department of Public Safety.
“I think it is a positive relationship and one that schools have sought,” Blocker said. “They provide a sense of assurance, and many teachers and staff and parents are grateful that school officers are available for the security and safety. At least someone is on campus to immediately respond and communicate and potentially secure any type of threat.”
Stephen Herbstreith, a Battle Creek police officer, has been assigned to Lakeview Schools since Feb. 2020. He also spent six months at Battle Creek Central High School. He works with the district's director of security, Leonardo Rivera, to oversee seven buildings with 4,100 students and 500 staff.
Herbstreith said as students return to in-person learning, he's working to resume security training and meeting with staff in each building to review safety protocols. He hopes to have active shooter trainings before the end of the year.
"During some of the pandemic, we had schools closed or hybrid learning or some virtual," he said. "We didn’t have safety training. This is our first full year of school, and so we haven’t trained ... We have some students in the third grade who have not been in a full year of school yet.”
In the Battle Creek area, there have been varying degrees of threats against schools this year.
On Thursday, the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office said they investigated a threat made by a 14-year-old toward Homer Schools. The student confessed and said he was dared by other students to make the remark, police said.
Now, deputies are seeking charges.
In October, a 14-year-old Harper Creek student was arrested for threatening to shoot a classmate.
Herbstreith said nearly a dozen threats have been investigated at Lakeview schools this year. Most stemmed from one student threatening another and were deemed not credible after an investigation.
At Lakeview and other area districts, threats are usually investigated by a crisis team that can include a liaison officer, school principal, superintendent, counselors and others.
"When there is a threat you should activate an assessment team which is a group of members who get together to discuss the threat and what they should do," Hinkley said. "You need mental health, counselors, law enforcement and school officials."
One of Herbstreith's priorities is to discourage students from doing anything that might be considered a threat.
“Kids think they are being funny, but it's not a joke," he said. "We have had a few threats this year and they were unfounded. They have been addressed and we move on, but we are trying to educate the kids that you can’t mess with this.”
Among the things he's investigated were an empty gun box found on a school bus and a shell casing found on a bus.
“We take them as threats, but they turn out not to be anything."
Herbstreith said he routinely communicates with resource officers in other schools, because with school of choice transfers, students across the city know each other.
He encourages staff to watch for concerning signs among students, like drawings or searches on the internet. And that training must be adjusted for elementary, middle or high school students and staff.
How social media impacts schools
Trevor DeVeaux, Student Services and Program Director for Pennfield Schools, said threats on social media have "ramped up" in the last few years.
"We had some of that prior to COVID, but certainly we’ve seen more of that," he said. "You have to follow situations that are not just a threat to a building or personnel, but threats from student to student that can spill into the school that happen outside of school on social media."
Given the severity of a threat made on social media, school districts work with local law enforcement to locate the student, often making a home visit.
While school liaison officers are tasked with patrolling hallways, they also spend a significant amount of time scouring social media for threats.
“The drama that social media creates in school is absolutely horrible,” Herbstreith said. “That is 90 percent of our problem is drama from social media. Group chats are going on and one kid is bullied and gets upset and makes a comment that is classified as a threat.”
Herbstreith said social media threats tend to occur when students are together and one dares another to make a comment, or they give one another their passwords.
“They have to understand it's not a joke and has to be taken seriously.”
Students speak up
Battle Creek Public Schools, Lakeview Schools and Pennfield Schools each passed bonds over the past year that will result in significant infrastructural upgrades, including those specific to improving safety from outside threats.
Meanwhile, the State of Michigan offers a 24/7 hotline and app called "OK2Say," which allows students to confidentially report tips on potential harm to students, employees and schools.
At a recent Pennfield Schools Board of Education Meeting, 11th grader Nadalie Pratt proposed an in-house anonymous reporting system where staff could more quickly respond to threats and acts of violence.
Pratt said in an email that an anonymous school reporting system would "piggyback" on OK2Say.
"There are some times where you don't want to report something to the police but still feel the school needs to know," Pratt said. "Also times that you need someone to get there immediately."
Pratt added that school safety is something she thinks about often, but more in regards to fighting than a potential school shooter. However, the shooting in Oxford "puts into perspective how anything could happen to any school."
She continued: "This mindset has bonded a lot of us to work together with students and staff to make our school a safer place. I believe every student has the right to feel safe in school physically and mentally ... Hopefully with the help of staff, administrators, the board and other students, we can work together to make our school a safer place."
Contact Trace Christenson at 269-966-0685 or tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com. Contact Nick Buckley at nbuckley@battlecreekenquirer.com or 269-966-0652. Follow him on Twitter:@NickJBuckley
This article originally appeared on Battle Creek Enquirer: After Oxford: Battle Creek schools, police share responsibility of safety
