EVANSVILLE — The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. is dipping its toes into the water on metal detectors as a means of keeping weapons out of schools, according to Superintendent Darla Hoover.
Hoover told the Courier & Press on Wednesday the school corporation is experimenting this year with a metal detector at the Academy for Innovative Studies (AIS) through which students must pass at middle school and high school entrances.
The superintendent made the disclosure two days after EVSC parent Melissa Voegel implored the school board in a public meeting to place walk-through metal detectors in all 40 of its schools. Voegel was speaking a week after a Delaware Elementary School student was caught trying to sell an unloaded handgun at school, although she told the Courier & Press she was planning to send an email to Hoover on the subject before that happened.
Coming about a month into the 2025-26 school year, the incident at Delaware represents the only report of a gun in schools so far, EVSC says.
Hoover said the metal detector at alternative school AIS has been in place since the new school year began in August. EVSC said there are no reports as yet of anyone trying to get a weapon through the machine.
“It’s just as a pilot (program) so that we could see how that looks, see how students respond, see what that does for entry,” Hoover said.
Speaking along with Hoover, EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg said the metal detector pilot program is merely a part of the school corporation’s research into potentially effective tools to keep guns out of schools.
EVSC endeavors to “investigate all options,” Woebkenberg said.
Hoover would not commit to keeping the metal detector in place all school year.
“We’re just assessing it as we go,” she said. “We just wanted to have an opportunity to have one, see what that looks like from the staff end, talk to students about what that is like, and so that’s where we ended up putting it for this year.”
EVSC hasn’t priced out a large-scale metal detector initiative at schools in case the school corporation decides the machine at AIS is an asset, Hoover said. Students may be compelled to pass through the machine at AIS, she noted, but there are multiple other entrances at that school and others.
The machines can be expensive, the superintendent said, “but if we knew that was the thing, then we would explore that.”
It’s not all about metal detectors or the potential for metal detectors.
EVSC’s other measures against weapons in schools include counselors, cameras, locked doors, social workers and safety teams at school and in the corporation itself.
As a visible deterrent and in potential response to an incident, EVSC’s primary investment in school safety at this point is eight officers on its own police force supplemented by seven officers of the Evansville Police Department and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office. There are not enough of them to be in all 40 schools, but they are in and out of schools as needed throughout school days.
All of them are armed, Woebkenberg and Hoover said.
“They’re forming working relationships with the school administrative teams in those buildings, they’re familiar with those buildings — because we want to make sure that if there was a responsive situation, the deputies and police officers know exactly who they’re dealing with and where they’re going,” Woebkenberg said.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Hoover: EVSC is trying out metal detectors at one school
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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