OLATHE, Kan. — Olathe East High School hosted a district-wide meeting Tuesday night on procedures and protocols after a March 4 shooting at the school.
Parents asked questions and gave feedback, hoping for a safer future.
"When your child asks you, 'Mom I don’t feel safe at school,' I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure I can guarantee that he should feel safe at school," Melissa Fisher said during the community feedback portion of the meeting.
Fisher is a district employee and parent.
Safety was top of mind for her and many other parents at the town hall meeting, led by district leadership and public safety officials.
A frequently asked question and topic: will Olathe install metal detectors at building entrances?
Right now, the answer is that it isn’t imminent.
"There is no one feature that’s a guarantee, there’s no one end all be all that’s going to create a 100% safe environment," Brent Kinger, the district's director of safety said. "What we do is we select what we think gets the best out of it."
Parents still want all options available.
"I don’t think any door should be closed with the safety and security of our children," Fisher said.
The district walked through its notification systems and active shooter drills for all grade levels, among other procedures at school buildings.
One concerned mother wants more discussion on what happens at home.
"I don’t want us to go home without bringing it up tonight, because if children didn’t have access to firearms, we would be in a very different scenario," Nikki McDonald said.
She says gun safety and gun storage are important tools of prevention.
"The truth of the matter is, we have a lot of guns in this country," McDonald said. "That’s a problem that’s not going to go away, so until we have some better regulation, until we regulate each other and ourselves, we’re going to continue to have more tragedies."
Dozens of families in attendance took note of what they called a transparent and important meeting.
At the meeting, one parent said improving security across the district "requires all of us, every person in this room."
