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On May 13, Jessamine County Schools held a school safety forum.

According to district employees, this safety forum was the first to be held in recent memory. It was organized after the district experienced two lockdowns in March. The first incident led to all Jessamine County Schools being put on lockdown for what the Nicholasville Police Department (NPD) later confirmed was an unsubstantiated threat at East Jessamine High School. A few weeks later, a vape in a student’s pocket was mistaken for a potential firearm at East Jessamine Middle School. 

The two lockdowns, understandably, caused quite a commotion among parents and guardians, so the district held the forum to provide transparency to parents on what preventative measures the district has in place and its response to lockdowns. 

Director of Operations at JCS, Matthew Simpson, spoke with the Jessamine Journal a couple of days after the meeting to discuss how his presentation and the forum went. 

“We feel positive about the meeting. We felt the people there were interested in school safety and wanted to hear more about our actions. So, I really enjoyed the conversation and the opportunity to share what we are currently doing and the partnerships that we have throughout the community,” Simpson said. In his presentation, he said he wanted to go through and provide a “comprehensive look at what we do each and every day to ensure that students and staff are safe and secure.” 

Simpson walked the 50 in attendance through the 2019 Senate Bill 1, the Kentucky School Safety and Resiliency Act. According to Kentucky Youth Advocates, this law created guidelines and set standards to help ensure student safety in schools and laid the foundation for strengthening schools.

Kentucky required School Resource Officers (SRO) at each public campus through the Kentucky School Safety and Resiliency Act. “So, you have to have an SRO in your building, but then they added the caveat that said ‘as funds allow.’ So basically, the State said if you got the money, you should have an SRO. That’s one of those unfunded mandates that came through in he 2019 bill,” Simpson said. However, he added that the General Assembly budgeted $20,000 for a resource officer per campus two years ago at all Kentucky Public Schools. “So we have nine officers covering 13 schools. With that, we get $20,000 per officer from the State. But we consider a campus, Rosenwald-Dunbar Elementary and West Jessamine Middle, since they’re so close. Our campus at East High is in the same area as East Middle and Red Oak Elementary; that’s a campus. Over here, we’ve got JCTC, the Village, and Warner Elementary all on one campus. Right now, I feel like one SRO for those three schools is a bit much. I would love to see us add another SRO to one of these buildings so we can make sure officers are in closer contact at the facility. That would mean the State would give us another $20,000. It doesn’t even come close to covering the cost. But it’s a start, it helps. We’re grateful for it and really glad we can have that assistance,” Simpson said. 

“Our SRO program is fantastic. It’s a beautiful partnership between Jessamine County School District, the City of Nicholasville, the Jessamine County Fiscal Court, we have a green relationship with Wilmore City, and through all of that, we all share the cost. Everyone views it as school safety is part of our responsibilities. We don’t just say that, we act on that through the use of dollars. So, for them to pony up and say, ‘we’re all in this together, it’s all of our responsibilities,’ I’m very grateful that we live in a community that not only says it but also believes it, and they’ve proven that. Not every community is like that. There are lots of communities where the school system is doing it on their own,” Simpson said. 

Simpson and other district and school leaders did mention the two lockdown incidents. They emphasized that, thankfully, in both incidents, a weapon was never actually on school grounds. 

The vape situation at East Jessamine Middle was complicated, but it led to students standing up to protect the rest of the school. 

“One of the things communicated during the forum was about the second incident at East Middle. It was not even that the kid pulled it out of his pocket and said ‘hey look what I got!’ it was just innocuous behavior that was like, ‘I’ve got something in my pocked I shouldn’t have and he’d say, ‘don’t be touching my pocket,'” Simpson said. According to district officials, the student never intended anyone to think it was a weapon. 

A student overheard the mischievous but innocuous student, and Simpson said that at first, they didn’t think anything of it. “But as he continued to think on it, the student said, ‘Well, what if?’ So for us, that student did exactly what he should have done. He reported something that he wasn’t sure about. He saw something, and he said something. The fact of the matter is, it wasn’t anything, thankfully. But for our kids, it takes a whole lot of courage to say, ‘you know what, I do want to be an upstander. I want to stand up for my colleagues, classmates, and teachers. I saw something that concerned me, so I wanted to tell somebody about it.’ I hope that our student population understands that one, these actions, where we’re playing a prank or being silly, having an underdeveloped frontal lobe, can create real panic and cause what has occurred. But to our other students who saw that and reported that, I hope it’s also an encouragement for them that they have a voice and did the right thing.” 

Some parents, online and in the forum, posited the idea of metal detectors for the school. Although it’s not completely off the table, Simpson said, “We want to be cautious as we examine that. We’re open to the idea of possibly piloting that at a school that’s maybe smaller, but the idea of us sending 1200 kids through a metal detector in a very short time doesn’t make sense.” The backlog of students created by metal detectors, according to a former principal and Jessamine County Schools Board of Education Members, Denise Adams, causes a dangerous “sitting duck” situation, where students are stuck outside waiting to get through the metal detector, unsheltered and unsafe in a situation of severe weather or crime events. Simpson added that even a pen will go off in a metal detector. “It is literally emptying everything of your pockets; it’s having someone search your bag and do that very well. There are school districts in our area that have metal detectors, and they’ve still had weapons make their way into the school. It’s not only the door entry and access, but the idea of just adding one metal detector… on the cheap end, that would cost about $8,000 for one stand-alone metal detector. We would probably need a dozen at each school to do that, plus male and female staff members in case something happened to search an individual. So there are a lot more nuances than people think. One district in Western Kentucky is using a different product and is spending $750,000 on those systems. That’s just astronomical. The idea that we could take that kind of money and use it in so many other programs that would have a greater impact on kids, we feel that it would be a misuse of funds.” 

Other members of the public posited that having armed people at each school that the children do not know. Simpson called this a ‘school guardian,’ which the General Assembly recently passed legislation to allow. “We don’t love that kind of conversation. Essentially that person has to have either some police or military experience in their background, and then they have to go through a certification process,” Simpson said, adding that Jessamine County already has enough community support from local government and law enforcement, as opposed to smaller counties that don’t have a large enough police force who may benefit from the school guardian program. 

“I don’t love the guardian program, but I can see where it would be a wonderful addition for a school system that didn’t have it. They still have to go through specialized training, they still have to be able to certify with a weapon, that kind of thing. For our SROs, they are all sworn officers through NPD or Wilmore PD right now. We don’t currently have SROs from the sheriff’s office. But that’s not out of the question,” Simpson said. He believes the current SRO program at Jessamine County School is right for the district. “All of them have specialized training on how to work with kids, the policing that gets to be done in a school building, how you build relationships, and the types of conversations you have. Because you have to take a very different dynamic and mindset from working the street, so to speak, versus coming into the building and having conversations with students.”

NPD Chief Michael Fleming highlighted a point that Simpson believed was a testament to the success of the SRO program. “He basically talked about the situation at East High. There was an incident that, if you didn’t know the student, it would have looked like he was being suspicious. As the SRO came through the building, he saw the kid, recognized him, knew some of his disabilities, and said, ‘Okay, that’s not suspicious activity.’ Those were his mannerisms that we normally would portray. So, having the SRO in the building being able to make those relationships, knowing those kids, knowing the idiosyncrasies, it’s just a perfect relationship. It’s a really great highlight to see how important our SRO program is.”

Although the State began requiring SROs in 2019, Jessamine County Schools have had them since 2007. 

When Simpson was growing up, he remembers having an SRO at his school in Bowling Green after the Columbine mass shooting. “I remember us getting our SRO and him sitting at his desk, not getting out, and meandering through the halls. It’s just very different now. The expectation is very different, and there is such an emphasis on, you gotta be out in the classroom. You’ll be out in the hallways talking to kids, at the cafeteria, circulating, getting to know kids, having conversations. That’s the real strength of the SRO program.” 

Simpson brought up a statement from a community member at the forum. They said they want to know what is going on the second the school goes into lockdown. “That’s just not feasible. Because both of these incidents weren’t even school-initiated lockdowns, the NPD called our SRO over the radio saying, ‘there’s been a report at your school. You need to go into lockdown.’ So, as a school system, we didn’t even really know what was happening. We won’t put something out when we don’t know the information. First, we will ensure students and staff are safe and secure. That’s our first priority. Our second priority will be to investigate and ensure we know the circumstances. Our third priority is clear and accurate communication. The last thing we want to do is put something out that’s false, and then we have to walk it back. We want to do it well, the very first time. Although we’ve gotten some pushback for that, that’s just how we will do business. We don’t feel like we need to apologize for that.” 

Towards the end of the forum, Simpson thanked people who attended. “There were a lot of community leaders, religious leaders, and civic leaders who were there. I encouraged them to talk with their friends, neighbors, and parishioners, just to say this is what the forum was, and (inform them).”