McKinney Families Push For Metal Detectors After Student Suicide

MCKINNEY, TX — The fight for school safety is on after a student with a gun fatally shot himself in a McKinney North High School classroom last week, and parents aren't sitting idly by.

Although the school year ends this Thursday, parents and some students are joining forces to tighten security at the school by the time the 2018-2019 school year starts.

In the meantime extra security is present on campus, the district's superintendent said in a statement Friday. But even so, police are investigating threats that continue to circulate on social media.

And while school safety is on the mind of concerned parents, school officials did not respond to eight calls and four emails made to department heads and to the superintendent.

A Facebook group titled "McKinney Parents and Students for Metal Detectors," which has garnered 709 members since its June 1 inception, aims to lobby, fundraise and organize until metal detectors are used to improve school safety.

The group is described as "a page for parents and students alike to unite and collaborate efforts for having metal detectors installed in McKinney ISD schools."

Melody Timmons' daughter is a junior at McKinney North High School. After last week's death, Timmons, a cofounder of theFacebook group, said her daughter has felt angry and betrayed.

"She just seemed very ready to face [returning to school], really," Timmons said. "She seems to have a little bit more anger about this than I expected from her. She feels like this was a betrayal. She doesn't understand what all of that means."

And although the district placed more police officers and security guards on campus, Timmons said she still had concerns as students returned to school Monday, including a fear that district officials did not search students' bags for weapons.

"Overall, I think they're doing a good job," she said. "The dialogue is opening; that was the whole point about it... This is not just about us, but about something much bigger — a collaboration. Not just MISD but all public schools. This is a nation-wide issue."

In a secondary effort to encourage the school to invest in metal detectors, McKinney resident Sean Nance started an online petition to rally support for the cause. That petition grossed 305 signatures in less than 24 hours.

"I understand that metal detectors alone are not the solution, however, no solution is comprehensive without metal detectors and we should require these to be included in the budget immediately for the high schools with consideration for lower level schools as well," Nance wrote on the petition. "We can not be the city that says 'Oh it's too expensive' or 'Oh it's too much of a hassle.' We need to be leaders in this movement."

Timmons said she, along with other members of the Facebook group, plan to meet and strategize before attending a school board meeting on June 26.

"We've got a bunch of parents who are ready to do what it takes and keep this going until something is done," she said.

Arlington ISD implemented metal detectors in recent years, but James Smith, Security Manager for the district, told Patch they aren't used daily.

Metal detector screenings are "pretty labor intensive to do on a regular basis," he said. Instead the school uses handheld or mobile metal detectors to spot-check students and classrooms as the need arises.

The detectors are often taken to individual classrooms where students are screened when necessary but that when threats are made to the campus, the entire population of the campus is screened.

"If there's a rumor, and we had it happen several times last year, a rumor of bringing weapon to school we try to screen everyone coming into campus," Smith said.

He also said the district does a few sporadic scans throughout the school year. The scans sometimes turn up stolen items or drug paraphernalia but rarely a weapon, which he calls fortunate.

Adrian Sedeno, a salesman for Garland-based metal detector organization Garrett Metal Detectors, told Patch his company creates devices that allow between 500 and 700 people to be scanned per hour.

Garrett services several large entities including AT&T Stadium, SMU's Moody Colosseum, Six Flags over Texas and most Olympic Games. Garrett also services local school districts, including Dallas and Arlington school districts.

The scanners Garrett recommends for school security have 23 different settings which allow for various levels of screening. Some of the more efficient settings automatically disregard metal items like belts and keys but can still detect knives with a blade larger than four inches and guns as small as a 22 caliber Derringer.

The settings can be easily adjusted in the event of a security scare, allowing officials to screen for other metal objects.

The metal detectors recommended for schools, the PD 6500i model, is TSA-approved, certified by Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshal service and meets all Safety Requirement Act guidelines.

For some schools in the DFW area, Garrett waives shipping costs. The average PD 6500i metal detector costs around $3,200 per device, he said.

When setting up new metal detectors in schools, Garrett first visits the school to recommend safety best practices. Sedeno said the company often advises districts to lock certain entrances and exits while implementing trained security workers at others.

A typical screening checkpoint, Sedeno said, consists of a baggage checker, a second screener armed with a handheld metal detector, and a pacer.

As the name suggests, the pacer helps students move through the detectors at a expedient pace. Garrett recommends one pacer per every two detectors.

Garrett also recommends one bag checker and one secondary screener per detector. Sedeno said one police officer should be stationed at each entrance to immediately handle any threats.

It's hard to say what the cost of implementing metal detectors at McKinney ISD would be. A look at student body population, staff size and number of trained security guards and school resource officers would be needed before an estimation could be made.

A May 8 article from McKinney's Community Impact Newspaper detailed current security measures at McKinney ISD schools.

Among those measures are 1,500 working security cameras districtwide, upgraded cameras on all 159 buses, crisis counselors focused on handling bullying, a Tip411 line that allows students to report suspicious activity, 11 districtwide student resource officers and monitored entrances and exits that allow only authorized people to enter and leave school buildings.

Budget proposals for the 2018-2019 school year could place two more school resource officers on elementary school campuses, which currently have no resource officers.

Community Impact reported each resource officer costs approximately $100,000 to cover their salary, benefits and equipment. The addition of officers is pending approval of a new school budget. The school board is set to vote on the budget in June.

Organizers of "McKinney Parents and Students for Metal Detectors" have not said what they'll present to the school board on June 26, if at all, but Timmons plans to spend her free time working toward this cause, one which she said is still "very much in its infancy."

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