Manhattan Beach City Council, MBUSD discuss campus safety
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education and the City Council held a rare joint meeting on Monday night that largely focused on how to make campuses safer in the wake of the mass shooting in a school in Parkland, Florida.
The City Council last month voted to give MBUSD school’s $1 million to help improve school security. Monday’s meeting, held at the Joslyn Community Center, explored what measures will be taken to achieve that end.
The Manhattan Beach Police Department and school district administrators have completed assessments of all seven MBUSD campuses. MBPD Chief Derrick Abell said that the campuses were all built at a time, 40 or 50 years ago, when considering such things as barriers and controlled access points were not an issue.
“Safety wasn’t a discussion point,” Abell said. “It was about learning.”
“It is a different time,” said Mayor Amy Howorth. “I don’t think we can say it enough — how strange it is that schools are not automatically considered a safe place. It’s all regrettable. But I’m glad we are having this discussion.”
Deputy Superintendent Dawnalyn Murakawa-Leopard said the police department helped the district identify areas of immediate need, beginning with fencing at four campuses — Pennekamp, Grandview, and Pacific elementary and Mira Costa High School — which would cost about $500,000.
A new district-wide radio system, at $200,000, is next on the list of priorities. Abell said that radios are essential because internet and phone communication can become compromised during emergencies.
“I will tell you, during critical incidents, at times these systems become overwhelmed,” Abell said. “If this happens, what other kinds of communication do we have available to us? Radios have the ability to communicate with anyone on campus, or for that matter any of your schools… I think it’s important to have various forms of communication available in times of need, and not just rely on what we normally do.”
Another immediate recommendation is a cell phone booster system for the Mira Costa campus and district headquarters, where cell signals are not always reliable due to campus construction. This upgrade would cost $150,000, Murakawa-Leopard said.
A fourth recommendation is likely currently beyond the district’s capacity — a district-wide camera system, similar to what Torrance Unified just installed at a cost of $15 million. Such a system would cost $2 million at MBUSD for the infrastructure alone, not counting staffing costs.
“I know that sounds way out of the realm, so to speak, but I think cameras are of absolute value,” Abell said. “…It may not be something immediately available to you, but to think about that into the future, and how we can accomplish it, is something we should consider.”
Board members and council alike expressed doubts about a camera system.
“With that much money there is a lot that can be done with training and security staffing, rather than hardware that requires additional staffing to make sure it has functionality,” said school board member Ellen Rosenberg. “We need a lot more evidence that this is the highest best use of those funds before we move forward on that.”
Another area of possible enhancement is increased security staffing, though no estimate or recommendation has yet been made.
“The question is how do we ensure each egress and ingress spot in the school is being watched by someone, and the campuses are being monitored,” Abell said.
New fences will be constructed this summer. Measure C bond monies are also partly dedicated to campus infrastructure improvements that will make schools safer, Murakawa-Leopard noted.
“Some of these things are already encompassed in what we had planned as part of Measure C,” she said. “But altogether those things, if we did them all, are an additional $1.4 million to what was already planned. Clearly, the generous contribution the city has made will help us a great deal with things that we otherwise would have been challenged to be able to do. So we are very grateful for that.”
Abell said the police department will provide extensive training to district staff.
“If you want to have your staff perform well during critical incidents, you have to have repetitive training,” he said, noting this ranges from tabletop exercises to full-blown simulations. “What you learn is there are a lot of emotions that come out, things you were not prepared for… You must learn, or correct, or modify. But in order for that to happen, you have to have that training. We will be investing in training in the near future with the school district.”
The chief also stressed the importance of adhering to a strict sign-in and badging process for everyone who comes on campus.
“Some parents might get upset and say, ‘I’ve been coming to this school for years. You know who I am,’” he said. “I understand that. But in order for every parent new to the school system to understand what the process is and how important it is, everyone has to fall in line with that. So part of it is role modeling.”
Councilperson Nancy Hersman, who along with Howorth is also a former school board member, said that nothing should be done to discourage parents from being on campus.
“Parents still like walking students to the classroom door, saying hi to the teacher,” she said. “I think that is a big part of the culture here.”
“We have to be careful about what we are losing if we have, sort of, these citadels,” said school board member Christine Cronin-Hurst.
“There has to be some balance to that,” Abell said. “I don’t know what that is, but over time, it will be worked out.”
Howorth said that in the school shootings that have occurred, the shooter was usually somebody familiar with the campus.
“It really struck me — these are not going to be strangers who come onto campus to do harm,” she said.