As the school year begins there are a number of unusual issues that now face them in these turbulent times. Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with Wicomico County Schools Superintendent Mica Stauffer about how his school system is tackling some of them.
RUSH: It's that time of year when the halls are filled with students making their way to their classrooms for the first time. This is Don Rush. Nearly 15,000 crowded into the public schools in Wicomico County, as they began the new year. One incident marred the opening week when an 18-year-old student at Parkside High School was arrested for carrying a gun to campus. Micah Stauffer, superintendent of the Wicomico County Public School system.
STAUFFER: We are having a great summer, [we're] off to a good start. Obviously very concerned about the incident that happened at Parkside High School and we are continuing to do due diligence with that and I want to make sure that I praise the administrative team, school resource officer at that school for handling it so quickly without any disruption to school as student was coming into school. But we are just continuing to work on school climate and safety.
RUSH: What kind of specific kinds of measures are you taking to reassure these students that they are going to be safe?
STAUFFER: Each and every day we always stress to our students the importance of if you see or hear something, please say something, and our students do a wonderful job with that. Beyond that, we've been working over the last few years to really strengthen the school security measures that we have within each of our buildings, whether it be from the buzzer system, the door system, and the entry systems that we have in all of our schools that require visitors to be able to access our buildings with our front office staff to security film on all of our exterior entrance doors. And we're expanding that. We've been upgrading our camera systems and looking to continue to put weapons detection systems even within those systems on the exterior parts of our buildings. We've also expanded our school resource officer staff with the help of funding from our local county government, which we appreciate very much. In addition to that, we've added campus security patrol staff within our high schools and middle schools, which is a team that works very closely with the school resource officer - patrolling not only interior of our buildings, but also the exterior of our buildings.
RUSH: We obviously had a series of immigration raids on a number of locations, [but not] as I believe, on a school system. What's your policy in terms of immigration agents and what's your sense about the mood in terms of the students themselves?
STAUFFER: We were fortunate in Maryland under our state superintendent, where we had some information that was collaborated upon last spring and in conjunction with the director of ICE, the regional director around the state and this area. And at that point in time, it was made clear that school campuses, not only the schools, but the properties around schools that they would not be areas that ICE agents would be looking to intrude upon. Nevertheless, we still put procedures in place like we would with any law enforcement or visitor to our campus. In order to access a student, you have to have a warrant. We have processes here internally where the school staff know they have to call over to speak with our designated staff at central office as well as our school security teams at that point to really access any type of student we would have certainly a system in place.
RUSH: Micah Stauffer, superintendent of the Wicomico County Public School System. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
