Berkeley Schools Have New Plan To Tackle Student Gun Problems
BERKELEY (KCBS) – A school security expert sees both the good and the bad in a plan to eliminate guns at Berkeley Unified schools. The plan, to be presented to the school board Wednesday night, comes after a number of students were caught with guns at the district's high schools this year.
Seven young people were discovered to be in possession of guns at Berkeley Highand Berkeley Tech in the first three months of this year.
President of the National School Safety and Security Services, Kenneth Trump, analyzed the report for KCBS, and had praise for its comprehensiveness. He said it covers prevention, security, police-school collaboration, and open communication with the community. However, he said it is lacking in an emergency preparedness plan.
"In one instance there was gunfire on campus and several school employees called other school employees instead of notifying the police," said Trump. "If you had a good emergency plan you'd want to make sure that the staff are empowered to make those calls right away."
KCBS' Margie Shafer Reports:
He noted that creating such a plan takes more time than money, and just involves going over hypothetical situations.
Trump also takes issue with Alice Training, which teaches kids to fight back against armed intruder. He describes it as a questionable practice and said that it is more suited to colleges and universities.
"That's not something that we recommend at a K-12 level," said Trump. "It's hard enough to get middle school kids to figure out whether or not they're going to do chicken nuggets or pizza at lunch, much less get coordinated simultaneously on a moment's notice to attack an armed intruder. That really could make them less safe in the end."
As for metal detectors, Trump said the report concluded that they just don't work because they aren't used consistently, mostly because they are costly and labor-intensive to staff.
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