MLSD superintendent talks high school security

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School Board is considering a series of security enhancements to Moses Lake High School.

The enhancements, which run the gamut from reducing access to MLHS to improving the school district’s communication system, were part of a series of recommendations from a school safety task force that met at MLHS last week.

Superintendent Josh Meek told members of the school board on Thursday that the proposed enhancements vary in cost but that need to be considered.

“These are all things that should be done,” Meek said. “Let us get to work with estimating (what these will cost) and see what can be accomplished.”

The costliest item the task force recommended was restricting access to MLHS to one or two entrances, possibly by putting a fence around the school, so that all access into the high school was through the front entrance or the commons, Meek said.

This would require some construction, and possibly allow MLHS to add some kind of metal detection system, Meek said.

And it would also require the task force’s second proposal, replacing all of the doors at MLHS and controlling access with an electronic key card system.

“Anybody who has spent any time on the MLHS campus knows that the doors around the building are problematic,” he said.

Meek said both of these changes would allow school officials to lock the building down quickly in case of trouble.

The task force also suggested improved behavioral intervention at the high school — such as dedicated personnel to deal with troubled students or students who make threats — and a more centralized communication system.

“When you were looking at threats, were you mainly trying to address major security threats like an active shooter situation or was there also a focus on everyday, smaller-level violence that occurs?” asked board member Elliott Goodrich.

Meeks said that the proposals to reduce access and replace all the outside doors address both major and minor incidents simply because things are always happening at MLHS.

“The ebb and flow of people constantly coming and going is problematic,” he said.

Moses Lake Police Chief Kevin Fuhr said the MLPS is looking at the possibility of adding one or two more school resource officers and having at least one officer dedicated to working at the high school, because the department’s two resource officers are often stretched thin responding to calls at the district’s 15 schools.

“We try to keep them in the high school as much as possible,” Fuhr said. “However, when you’re dealing with 15 schools and several hundred calls a year in all the schools, they aren’t always at the high school.”

Fuhr said this makes it hard for school resource officers to build relationships with kids — the whole point of having officers in the schools in the first place.

The board directed Meek to focus and get accurate cost estimates on all four of the task force’s recommendations.

But one board member also appreciated that the changes coming would involve more than just bricks, mortar, steel and glass. Or how people enter and exit the high school.

“We have a culture in Moses Lake of being courteous and friendly, which is a security risk,” said Board Member Susan Friedman. “People tend to hold the door open for the next person who’s coming through, and sometimes that person might not supposed to be going through that door.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.