Monday, May 6, 2024
GISD's Chief of Security Jeff Hastings with trained attack dog Annie.
Jeff Hastings, GISD's chief of security, and Granbury High School Security Officer Ben Carlson practice with Annie, a German Shepherd that is socialized but has been trained in controlled aggression.
At Brawner Elementary School, second grade teacher Meredith Coffman regularly, and a bit nervously, glances out the windows to the open field that is adjacent to her portable building.
Sometimes she sees a police vehicle cruise slowly through the school’s parking lot and that gives her a feeling of comfort.
When a student needs to go to the restroom but it is not time for Coffman to take the entire class, she radios for the school’s security officer or a paraprofessional to escort the child.
Coffman always keeps her door locked and her radio within reach. The radio is her lifeline in a classroom made more vulnerable by the fact that it is detached from the main school building.
The $394 million GISD bond proposal would have eliminated the need for portables and brought all students inside the fold of one main building, but in early May, voters opted not to pass it.
Having students in one building is no guarantee of safety, though, and what happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on Tuesday, May 24, is proof of that.
Nineteen police officers were in a hallway for almost an hour but did not storm a classroom to rescue terrified children from an 18-year-old shooter who had killed their classmates.
Border Patrol tactical officers arrived and shot and killed the man but by that time, 77 minutes had elapsed, and 19 students and two teachers were dead.
With every shooting that occurs on a school campus, parents want to know if their own child is safe at school.
In Hood County, they may be safer than most, even with the growing number of portable buildings.
The Granbury, Tolar and Lipan school districts have been training and implementing safety measures to guard against active shooters for years.
The Hood County Sheriff’s Office and the Granbury Police Department, too, have taken pains to prepare.
“We have standardized training when it comes to active shooter response and that’s the protocol we will follow every time,” said Police Chief Mitch Galvan, who declined to comment on the actions of police officers in Uvalde.
“That protocol is, if there is someone in a building that is actively trying to kill people, the main response of the people that get there first is to go and neutralize the threat. That mission doesn’t stop until that’s done.”
Sheriff Roger Deeds said that his office works with the Granbury PD “on a regular basis” as part of a combined Special Operations Group.
“We plan and prepare for a lot of different scenarios to be ready,” he said.
THREE PRONGS
With about 7,700 students, GISD is the largest school district in the county. Superintendent Jeremy Glenn said the district has a three-pronged safety plan for active shooter scenarios: deter, deny and defend.
As part of the $89 million bond that passed in 2013, GISD made sure that each campus has a single point of entry with a camera, a speaker system and a locked vestibule that can be unlocked electronically by office staff.
Visitors are required to present their driver’s license, which is then used to run a criminal background check.
“We want to know who is coming onto our campus,” Glenn said. “And we want to do everything we can to limit exposure from individuals who shouldn’t be on our campus.”
Teachers are trained to look for name tags on visitors and to report anyone not wearing one.
“We want everyone to be cognizant of their surroundings and know what’s going on,” the superintendent said.
Granbury High School has an extra layer of protection through guard stations on the parking lots. Visitors must stop at one when entering the campus grounds.
In 2018, the Granbury School Board adopted the School Marshal Program, Glenn said. It allows certain individuals who have Texas Commission on Law Enforcement training through the Texas Department of Public Safety to have access to firearms or to carry concealed firearms while on campus.
The district currently has about 30 school marshals, Glenn said.
Safety measures are in place where those firearms are concerned.
“It’s not like the wild, wild west,” the superintendent said. “It’s really thought out.”
Another safety component is in the form of Annie, an attack dog funded by the Granbury Educational Foundation. The dog is trained to run toward danger and to take down a shooter, Glenn said. Her handler is Jeff Hastings, the school district’s chief of security.
Glenn praised deputies and police officers for trying to keep a close eye on schools. He noted that doing so is most challenging for the sheriff’s office because deputies patrol a much larger area and Deeds is always in need of more deputies.
“This is not a perfect answer,” Deeds said about deputies trying to patrol school campuses between handling other calls. “But I do not have enough manpower to have deputies at each county school including Tolar and Lipan also. We do spend time in school zones in the mornings and try in the afternoons between calls.”
TOLAR AND LIPAN
The Tolar and Lipan school districts have significantly fewer students than Granbury ISD — Tolar has just over 800 and Lipan, about half that — but they have not skimped on safety precautions.
“As a district, we are constantly evaluating the safety measures that are in place for our students and staff,” Tolar Superintendent Travis Stilwell stated.
Like Granbury, Tolar ISD provides annual safety training, has implemented the same access control measures and participates in the School Marshal Program.
Campuses have threat assessment teams to help identify students showing signs of possible distress so that proactive measures can be taken, and the district has a keystroke monitoring program to notify school officials if a student types anything that could be perceived as threatening or dangerous, Stilwell said.
The district also has a safety team composed of members of the community, teachers, administrators and representatives of the sheriff’s department, the superintendent stated.
In addition, there is an anonymous tip line for students, and decorative but concealing coverings on campus doors and windows.
“These are festive and fun,” Stilwell stated, “but they also provide a visual shield for our students from the outside.”
As with Granbury ISD, there is regular communication with the sheriff’s office.
“Roger Deeds has done a great job of helping us along the way,” Stilwell said. “We have officers patrol the district on a regular basis. Any time we ever need assistance, they are always quick to respond.”
Stilwell said that the safety committee will meet again in a few weeks.
“One goal of mine over the summer is to increase the number of armed personnel on all campuses through either the School Marshal or Guardian programs,” he stated.
The Guardian Program is similar to the Marshal Program. It provides an armed response to an active shooter in the critical minutes before law enforcement arrives.
Lipan as well has secured its campuses with access doors and cameras, according to Superintendent Ralph Carter.
“We have trained staff and students with lockdown and active shooter drills,” he wrote in an email to the Hood County News. “We are adding the Guardian Program, which will arm certain staff members to protect our students. We have also been doing behavior intervention training (mental health training) for teachers to recognize different behaviors in the classroom and refer them to the counselors for help.”
A SAFER FUTURE
Glenn said he is focused on moving forward rather than dwelling on what might have been where the bond was concerned. But he said the bond would have made the district’s campuses safer.
In addition to eliminating the need for portable buildings, students would have been more spread out, which would have allowed teachers and school staff to get to know families and to have a better idea of who belongs on a campus and who doesn’t.
Were a new high school to have been built through the bond, students from both Acton Middle School and Granbury Middle School would have been moved to the “old” GHS campus where security would have been enhanced through the guard stations on the parking lots.
Glenn noted that Granbury ISD has one of the lowest tax rates in the state and said that the school board will likely come back to the community with an adjusted proposal next year.
“If a wealthy community like Granbury has the ability to put in place buildings and procedures to protect kids, why in the world will we not do it?” he posed. “Financially, our district has been managed well and, ultimately, we will go back to the public and say we need room for growth to accommodate these kids because we want them to have great schools, (but) we also want them to have safe schools.”
Coffman said she feels that the school district has done everything possible to keep teachers, staff and students safe.
“But I would have definitely been happier with the bond passing and us being able to move back into the building,” she said. “I’m just saying that definitely I’m more susceptible out here.”
Glenn expressed the hope that the Granbury City Council will support Galvan and the Hood County Commissioners Court will support Deeds, giving them the resources they need to operate top-notch departments.
Deeds said that parents can help keep schools safe by listening to their children’s safety concerns and then passing that information on to school administrators and law enforcement.
He also advised parents to monitor social media for threats and concerns.
TRAINING FOR PUBLIC
The Granbury Police Department conducts free active shooter training for the public.
Galvan said that anyone interested in scheduling a training for their business or organization can contact the department’s training coordinator, Sgt. Cris Brichetto, at 817-573-2648.
