KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Olathe Public Schools is hosting a "Safety Town Hall" Tuesday night at Olathe East High School.
Ahead of the town hall, KSHB 41 interviewed Olathe Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Jim McMullen about the event and school safety seven weeks after the shooting at Olathe East.
"We decided after the events at Olathe East on March 4 that it was important to get in front of the community and really share the comprehensive safety protocols that we have in place in our district that support all students and staff in our pre-K through 12 and support buildings in the district," McMullen said. "Really just an opportunity for the community to come out here and hear about our safety protocols, and also our partnerships with local law enforcement and fire department."
McMullen said that the district's safety services team is still doing an internal investigation of the shooting on March 4, and he hopes that the investigation will be completed by the end of the school year.
The event will have district staff and first responders providing an overview on the safety resources and plans that are already in place in the district. Families who attend the event will get a chance to ask questions and offer suggestions to the district.
The district said that the event will not focus on any one school or incident but the overall safety plans.
McMullen said that the event will be an opportunity for district staff to get feedback from the Olathe community about their safety policies, even though the district feels comfortable with the current procedures in place.
"We’ve been really excited that the feedback has been very positive parents really were supportive of the way we handled the incident that day from start to finish," McMullen said. "Certainly lots of questions about our safety protocols what we do to keep kids and staff safe questions range everything from, 'Why don’t you have metal detectors?' to 'Why don’t you have armored personnel in every building in the district?', so those are things we will address tonight."
When asked about why the district doesn't have metal detectors, McMullen pointed to the stabbing at Northeast Middle School last week, a school which does have metal detectors, to say that metal detectors are not full proof.
"Metal detectors are not full proof as we unfortunately learned in our greater Kansas City community," McMullen said. "We think a more layered comprehensive approach that we have in place is certainly what’s best and safest for students and staff."
The town hall starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Education put out a report last summer called the Report on Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2020.
The report stated that, in the year 2000, there were 23 school shooting that involved a death or injury, but in the last two years, each year there were 75 shootings.
But even with the large increase in shootings every year, "several crime and safety issues have become less prevalent throughout the last decade," the report said. It noted that fewer students were reporting being bullied than the decade before, and there is a "lower percentage of 12-to-18 year-olds" reporting being a victim of a crime.
