Mansfield ISD Could Spend More Than $2M On School Safety
MANSFIELD, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - Mansfield ISD is looking at some traditional and non-traditional methods to keep students safe in the event of a school shooting and more importantly, trying to prevent one all together.
The school district is looking at adding video control access locks to every school, where people would need to have a a badge to get or buzzed in.
All these recommendations will be voted on in June.
Last week, a student walked into a high school in McKinney with a gun and shot himself in an empty classroom.
While police believe there was not a larger plan to harm others, it's a nightmare scenario no school wants.
Tuesday night, the Mansfield ISD board heard safety recommendations.
The top recommendation is to spend more than $2 million for police officers.
Currently, there are full-time officers at Mansfield high schools and middle schools but not at elementary schools.
This would assign a full-time officer at every school in Mansfield ISD.
The district is also looking at doing a better job of monitoring students' social media accounts.
"What it does is it basically drops a net over a particular school and you can monitor social media coming in and out a particular area," said Mansfield ISD Police Chief Jimmy Womack.
The digital net could be set up to look for key words.
Right now, Mansfield ISD police only investigates specific online threats reported to them.
If a student makes a threat, they are currently removed from the classroom from the classroom for 30 days.
After serving time at an alternative school, they get to automatically come back, no matter the threat.
That may be changing.
"We've determined that we want to do an assessment that when they do go back, and when they go back, they're no longer a threat," said Mansfield ISD Assistant Superintendent David Wright.
Mansfield ISD is not considering metal detectors.
They looked it at, but decided against it because they felt it would create a bottle neck at entrances with kids lined up. A potentially easy opportunity for a shooter to target people without ever getting inside the school.