EVANSVILLE — Weapons detection technology isn’t guaranteed to work and can cause false alarms for items that aren’t weapons. Those are just two of the concerns EVSC’s new school safety consultant raised recently before the school board.
The remarks by Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, at last week’s school board meeting suggest the technology won’t be his company’s recommendation when it turns in its report this summer after completing a top-to-bottom assessment of security measures in schools.
EVSC has thus far resisted the calls of some parents that it follow the lead of Warrick County School Corp. WCSC decided on Oct. 13, after a run of threat incidents, to spend $300,000 on weapons detection technology at its three high schools and Warrick Pathways and Career Center.
But after Trump’s presentation last week, EVSC school board president Mike Duckworth said the corporation is wise not to “do a kneejerk reaction to a neighboring corporation’s and others within the state that put metal detectors in.”
“Our approach is a little more methodical,” Duckworth said, noting that EVSC would rely instead on what it and Trump’s firm learns from teachers and school administrators.
Trump pointed out that people still get weapons past Transportation Security Administration, and TSA agents “do a stellar job at what they do and are highly trained, more than you would ever be able to train school staff to do weapons detection.”
“So you may have weapons detection that has six different settings,” Trump said. “You have to decide what you’re going to do. Do you want to hit the most sensitive setting, where you’re going to pick up the small knives and other things and you’re going to have hundreds or thousands of kids standing outside for hours to get in?”
Trump pointed to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, where administrators recently asked students not to bring metal 3-ring binders and metal frame backpacks into school because those items appeared to set off weapon detection systems. School officials suggested students instead bring pocket folders, plastic 3-ring binders or notebooks.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools spent nearly $20 million on the technology, Trump told the school board.
“They realized that those false hits were causing disruptions coming in,” he said.
One thing Trump didn’t tell the EVSC school board: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools told Louisville Public Media News in 2023 that after installing weapon detection systems, the number of guns found dropped from 30 in 2021-2022 to three in 2022-2023.
Trump has made another point before about Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ experience with weapons detection technology, one he didn’t make to EVSC school board: This past August, a staff member there was charged with a felony after two guns were reportedly found inside a fanny pack at a high school. But the guns were discovered by staff— not scanners.
‘The financial piece’
Given that many students still ride school buses, Trump rhetorically asked EVSC school board members whether school officials would provide for metal detection of students before they board buses.
Weapons detection systems can effect fundamental changes to a school’s culture, the consultant warned.
“And then of course, the financial piece, and is there a better investment based upon your assessment and your data to put those resources somewhere else?” he said.
Trump noted that EVSC began the school year with a metal detector at the Academy for Innovative Studies through which students must pass at middle school and high school entrances.
“We’re openminded. There are certain contexts where weapons detection may play a role,” he said.
School districts may think they are alleviating parents’ concerns with weapons detection technology, Trump said, but that can backfire badly.
“There’s just so much enormous pressure — it’s like ‘OK, we’ll just put this up to make the parents feel safer,'” he said. ‘Until you have the first incident where they circumvent it. Now the parents are even more angry because they got the illusion — which we refer to as security theater — that that’s going to give some guarantee that nobody can give.”
Trump’s remarks disappointed Crystal Barnard, a Thompkins Middle School parent who has been vocal on school safety issues.
“Before they even finish an audit, they kind of seem like they’re against metal detectors or weapons detection,” Barnard said. “What do they really think that they’re going to come up with?”
Barnard guessed, based on Warrick County School Corp.’s expenditure of $300,000, that the $215,750 EVSC is paying Trump’s company could have been used to install metal detectors in two schools.
EVSC routinely spends millions on capital projects that arguably are necessary, Barnard said, but she said they are not as necessary as student safety.
“I understand that there’s a lot of costs with (weapons detection systems), but I really just don’t think that this is a price tag issue,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Weapons detection isn’t guaranteed, EVSC school safety auditor says
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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