With the advent of school shootings across the nation, educational facilities, including MHS, are beginning to implement stronger, more effective means of responding to an intruder.

“First of all, there was a safety film put on some of the glass in the building near the Welcome Center as people come in to check in,” Principal Dr. Greg Mathison said. “If I were to break a normal window pane, at my house, it will just shatter and open right up. Now it’s got a film on both sides, so that if it does shatter, it stays in place.”

The window is not the only security improvement that came with the Prop 4 bond issue. All schools also received new locks that lock from the inside. These locks have been installed in all classrooms except the band room.

“Prior to, teachers would have to step out into the hall, find their key, put the key in the keyhole, turn it, and then shut the door,” Dr. Mathison said. “The benefit is, in a true emergency, finding your key, getting that one out, and when your adrenaline and those things are pumped up, those things are very, very difficult.”

In addition to the locks, teachers’ keys to the school also have been updated.

“Every staff member has a key fob on their key ring now instead of an external key,” Dr. Mathison said. “That allows them to be able to come in on Saturday or Sunday if they need to come in and work, or if they need to come in and get into the building. It also helps us track who’s in and out of the building during those times as well.”

The biggest pros of the new safety improvements are they give students and teachers more time to stay safe.

“As far as the safety film and locks, it’s about saving time,” Dr. Mathison said. “Seconds are lives. The best thing when it comes to safety is to be proactive, and being proactive comes in several forms.”
In addition to the new safety features, School Resource Officer Joe Early also has been helping to improve the security by presenting the 4E (Educate, Evade, Escape, Engage) intruder drill policy to students and teachers.

“The new policy is no longer just shelter and place, but an option space policy, in which teachers will guide their classes out of the school if they feel it’s possible to do that in certain situations,” Officer Early said.

Teachers were also trained through a mock intruder situation. This training included actor gunmen with cap guns where teachers had to evade, finding ways to not only lock doors but create barricades and other ways of securing any points of entry.

“A lot of teachers say that now they feel more comfortable if an intruder situation were to arrive,” Officer Early said. “We’ve given them a lot more tools to work with, ideas on how to protect themselves, and they feel more educated on the situation.”

It is not yet certain when the new intruder system will be implemented, but communication will come out in October that further explains the plans.

“Until we have decided what will be the correct way to start broadening this as far as the drills go and we haven’t really had time to do that yet,” Officer Early said. “It hasn’t been organized in the correct manner just yet, and hasn’t had time to culminate.”

In coordination with his job as a police officer, Officer Early has worked not only in improving safety in schools, but also in other public places as well.

“I don’t think just schools; I think it’s more broad than even that,” Officer Early said. “Throughout history we’ve seen that there are more and more public shootings – we call them active shooter incidents – than ever before so I think everybody needs to understand that there’s also a possibility that it will occur, and it seems that the odds are going up in that favor.”

Despite the increase in public shootings, Zayn Tola, freshmen, has not felt any more dangerous being at school.

“In the area we live in there’s not much criminal activity happening as opposed to other places, so I feel more safe at school,” Tola said.

Tola has experienced the new intruder system as the system was implemented early in his school last year, Crestview. Crestview teachers received new locks as well as training.

“They definitely made me feel a lot safer because the older one again is just huddling at the back of the class – that’s not as safe as barricading the door or defending your class from an intruder,” Tola said.