As hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country on March 24 for the March for Our Lives demonstrations, local community members attended a conversation at Plant City High regarding guns and threats in schools.
Held by the Improvement League of Plant City and Safe and Sound Hillsborough, the event aimed at creating an educational dialogue between community members, educators and law enforcement.
“We don’t know how to respond when threats are made or things happen at our schools,” Danny McIntyre, chairman of economic development for the Improvement League and PCHS’s girls basketball coach, said. “Today is about learning the best way to react and how to keep our students safe.”
Representatives from the Public Defenders Office, the State Attorney’s Office, Plant City Police Department, Plant City High School and the Hillsborough County School Board were all in attendance to answer questions and discuss procedures in place in the event of an emergency.
McIntyre explained there are multiple levels of responses to threats in schools ranging from access control to a lockdown. In normal school hours, routine protocol includes limiting access points on campuses and directing visitors through main entrances.
During emergencies, that protocol changes. Lock-ins occur when there is a threat nearby. but not on campus. Students and staff are secured on campus until the local area is secure. Lockouts occur when there is a non-active threat on campus. Students and staff are removed from campus to control what is happening on site.
A lockdown is the most restrictive response to a crisis. If there is imminent danger, the students are told by administrators how to respond — hide, lock the doors, quiet cell phones — the threat is triaged and could then be deescalated to a lockout or lock-in.
Evacuations are also sometimes used as a response. Often, the students are simply moved away from the buildings, like in the case of a fire, while other times they are sent to their designated off-campus locations. For PCHS, this would be Plant City Church of God.
In a small town, it doesn’t take long for the public to know when a threat has occurred. However, Susan Sullivan, principal at PCHS, said immediately attempting to remove your child from school, constantly calling the student or the school or telling the student to leave campus could cause more harm than good.
“As a principal, my first priority is keeping my kids safe,” Sullivan said. “If there’s an emergency, my first response is not to pick up the phone to call parents. It’s to handle the threat and act in response to keeping the kids, their parents and the community safe.”
Several of the parents in attendance brought up bullying in schools and how it often instigated threats. They questioned how schools were responding to the issue and talked about the best way to handle it at home.
“It used to be you told kids to stand up for themselves,” Darbi Vanderford said. “Now your kid hits them and they pull a gun. Kids are scared of the repercussions from peers both in person and on social media, so they don’t talk about it.”
Her son, Dalton Vanderford, spoke on the harassment he has undergone while at school. He participated in the March for Our Lives rally at PCHS and said he felt there was lack of support from administration.
Freddy Barton, Executive Director of Safe & Sound Hillsborough, said schools had policies in place to help combat bullying, but any student who felt their voice wasn’t being heard should reach out to his group.
The Improvement League and Safe and Sound plan to make these meetings a regular occurrence so communication between community members and those involved can continue to blossom.
The consensus among those in attendance was simple: times are changing. Just days prior, Barton had been at a meeting with a group of youths. He jokingly complained about his weekend and how taxing it had been. When he asked what they did, one 17-year-old girl looked him straight in the eyes and said: “I got shot.”
“There were 24 youths there and they didn’t think anything of it,” Barton said. “They were so straight-faced. I couldn’t move on but they were so desensitized to violence… We have got to, as a community, realize that times have changed and we have to change along with them. Otherwise, the generation following ours will be completely lost.”