East Lansing to make major changes to security at high school

EAST LANSING – East Lansing Public Schools will hire three unarmed security officers to patrol its high school, and officials will consider hiring a certified police officer to work as a school resource officer following recent violent acts at the high school.

Superintendent Dori Leyko and Assistant Superintendent Glenn Mitcham on Monday reviewed a list of safety enhancements being made at the high school with Board of Education members. Several changes have already been made and others are in the works.

The district has finalized a deal with Grand Rapids-based DK Security to provide three security officers at East Lansing High School but has not yet chosen the officers.

Those officers will be tasked with supervision of hallways, bathrooms and the lunch room. One security officer will also provide supervision during after-school hours.

“We are close to having security, unarmed security folks,” Mitcham said.

Security officers should be in place and working in the high school no later than March 13.

The plan includes changes that have already been implemented, like increasing hallway and bathroom supervision, restricting hall passes during the first and last 10 minutes of every class period and assigning additional security and supervision at athletic events.

The school district sent a survey to students, staff, families and community members to collect input on more controversial safety enhancements, like cellphone and backpack bans in classrooms. Of the 719 people who responded to the questions, including students, staff, community members and others, 72% supported hiring a school resource officer for the school district.

East Lansing Public Schools once employed two security guards at the high school and a school resource officer who shared time across all district buildings several years ago. Leyko said the funds that paid for those positions were "repurposed" to instead provide personnel who could help monitor hallways and support students and families.

Former Board of Education chair Kath Edsall, who has argued that security at the high school hasn't been compromised since the removal of the school resource officer several years ago, said she supported the discontinuation after a police officer used a Taser on a student for being disrespectful and another incident that left a former student disabled after they were not allowed access to an inhaler.

If the school district does opt to hire a school resource officer, it's unclear which law enforcement agency the officer would come from.

Jared Roberts, who has a son in the seventh grade at MacDonald Middle School in East Lansing, two weeks ago was advocating for the district to hire a school resource officer at a school board meeting minutes before a gunman came to the nearby Michigan State University campus, killing three students and injuring five. The incident prompted officials to lock down East Lansing High School and postpone the board meeting.

The tragic shooting at MSU highlights the need for a school resource officer, Roberts said.

"It impresses upon me and the shock that we're all feeling as a community just how random these events could be," he said. "Nothing could have prevented this person from waking up and starting this thing first thing in the morning instead of 8 p.m. at night. Nothing, other than random grace, prevented this person from walking down Abbot Road instead of turning left on Burcham."

District officials said the small number of survey results may not accurately reflect the thoughts or opinions of a majority of the school district and they are working to get more people to complete the survey, including East Lansing Public Schools staff, only 59 of which completed the survey.

Concerns about violence have grown among students, staff, families and community members culminating after a Jan. 19 fight outside a basketball game at the school that saw a firearm dropped by someone involved in the fight, and another fight on Jan. 20 inside the school.

Shari Brooks, the mother of one of the students involved in a fight between two groups of students on Jan. 19, previously said her son was moved to the school's online program and he quickly completed it, but there was never a plan made to ensure his success. She also questioned why the district had not brought all the students together, rather than meeting with students connected to both groups that had been fighting individually.

"It isn't lost on us that, as a board, you all worked to hire a security firm faster than you all worked to partner with parents who asked for help with the administration to get a meeting seeking resolution," Brooks told board members.

At Monday's meeting, Brooks, speaking on behalf of an East Lansing "parent advocacy team," said that after a Jan. 30 board meeting that was packed with concerned and scared students, parents, teachers and community members, parents worked to bring the students together who had been involved in the fighting. On the following Wednesday, Feb. 1, they took some of those boys out to dinner and by the end of the night, they were singing karaoke together, Brooks said.

By that Friday, Feb. 3, the parents then partnered with The Village Lansing, a nonprofit organization that focuses on youth gun violence prevention, intervention and support. The Village Lansing staff brought more than 15 of the boys from both groups together, Brooks said, to provide additional conflict resolution and mediation.

“Our children took accountability for themselves," Brooks said. "We continue to ask you all to help us help you help us. It’s not for you all to do it on your own, it’s for you all to help us work with this administration to bring some resolution. We’re still just asking you all to meet our children at their humanity. You’re going to bring in security officers before you bring in parents. We’re here, we’re here.”

Michael Lynn Jr., co-founder of The Village Lansing, who stood with the mothers and their sons, who are Black, said the ongoing violence issue at East Lansing High School is "flooded in bias, racial and economic." If police come into the schools, he fears those students will be targeted and instead of receiving suspensions, they'll receive criminal charges.

Lynn Jr. said he became involved on Dec. 5 when he received a call from concerned parents and reviewed video of one of the fights. Since then, the students have been brought together to work toward a resolution. On Feb. 6 both sides of students came together, eight students from one group and nine from other, without parents, to meet together and work out their differences.

"They had some cussing, some arguing went on and there was a couple times when it seemed it might get out of hand, but we were prepared for that," Lynn said. "The part about this that I want you all and everybody else to know is what resulted in this − there was a handshake, love amongst them, communication between all of them ... these were groups that couldn't even be in the same room in East Lansing."

In the coming weeks, administrators plan to further improve safety, including reinstating an in-school suspension program that provides discipline, rehabilitation and support for suspended students while also keeping them in school, assuring all 86 exterior doors of the high school are fitted with alarms, installing more lockdown buttons near office secretary desks and improving emergency communications with families.

The school is limiting student entry to the high school to two doors before school starts and just the main door during school hours, adding alarms to exterior doors and planning active shooter training, critical incident response training and de-escalation training.

It’s unclear how much the safety enhancements will cost. Leyko said the district is receiving a state safety grant of approximately $436,600 that can help pay for some costs.

Leyko and Mitcham initially were expected to review the new safety measures at a meeting on Feb. 13 before the shooting at Michigan State University that left three students dead and five injured prompted a lockdown at East Lansing High School, where the meeting was being held, and the meeting postponed.

Contact Mark Johnson at majohnson2@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: East Lansing to make major changes to security at high school