School Safety Forum

Director of Schools Millard House II, Montgomery County Sheriff John Fuson, and Clarksville Police Chief Al Ansley took questions from the community during the meeting. Due to time constraints, some questions were not addressed. Please see below for responses to questions that were not addressed at the meeting.

Q: Are you considering changing fire alarm evacuation protocols and processes?

A: No, unless allowed by Tennessee State Law.

Q: Have you explored security film that can be applied to windows to stop intruders?

A: Yes, this option has been explored.

Q: Have you considered adding additional school counselors to help intervene with the mental health issues of our students?

A: We will be implementing the new school counseling model next year which requires a counselor to spend 80% of their time in direct service to students. The new model will take testing and assessment duties away from the counselors which will allow them to spend more time in direct service to students. We will continue to look at our growth numbers and ratios to ensure that we have appropriate counseling support for all schools.

Q: What about taking cell phones and other mobile devices out of schools?

A: In order to prepare students to be college and career ready, we need to ensure that they have access to a digitally-blended curriculum.

Q: What about a front office controlled automatic classroom door lock by push of a button?

A: This process would be cost prohibitive and would not be allowed by the state fire marshal.

Q: What about stricter rules for bullies?

A: Principals have the discretion in the CMCSS Code of Conduct to assign a full range of discipline to students who have been found to bully other students. Credible electronic threats that are founded can lead up to a year’s expulsion for a student.

Q: If metal detectors are not feasible, what about wands to detect any weapons?

A: Metal detector wands have been issued and utilized in the past at some CMCSS schools. However, this is not a common practice due to time restraints and school population sizes.

Q: I keep hearing fire code as the reason for not having door stops – but is the fire code really more important than the lives of students during an active shooter?

A: As a public school system, we are required by law to abide by the regulations set forth by the state fire marshal’s office. The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority. We will continue to research safety and security measures to identify opportunties for improvement that are in compliance with the state fire marshal’s regulations.