Dear Mr. Jaramillo,
I testified during a 2019 joint city/LCPS meeting held at Oñate High School. At that time there was concern over a prior school shooting incident. At that time we learned that only one security guard in the entire LCPS system was authorized to be armed to protect our schools and our children. And this one person was assigned to the main headquarters building of LCPS, not any one of the schools. Thus, our children were left virtually defenseless to attack by an active shooter, except, perhaps by accident, if an LCPD officer happened to be assigned to the site.
Of course, that would not have helped the situation at an elementary school such as occurred in the latest Texas shooting.
So my question is – What has changed in the protection plan of the LCPS over the past 3 years?
It appears that several of the schools have been “hardened” in the sense of now having fencing that surrounds the schools on nearly all sides. This could be both good and bad. On the one hand it means that a shooter could not approach the school from the back, except by scaling a fence. On the other hand it means that any shooter that entered the school property from the main drive-in entrance could potentially have the entire school population trapped inside a fenceline so that they could not escape through back exits to safety.
So, again, I ask – How have your improvements over the past 3 years adequately addressed the active shooter situation so that the extra fencing that has been installed will not result in even more deaths should a shooter gain entry into a school?
Have you considered possibly arming teachers and training them (on a volunteer basis) so that any shooter who might think of wrecking havoc would not know who was armed and who was not?
Regards,
Dave Tofsted
