McHenry County school districts highlight on-campus security measures in wake of tragic Texas school shooting

McHenry County school districts have reemphasized relationships with both local police forces and mental health services in the wake of an attack by a lone gunman at a Texas elementary school Tuesday that left 21 people dead and 17 injured.

Security measures used by local school districts include screening and running background checks on all entrants into the school buildings, buzzer systems and a technology system that monitors students’ documents for warning signs.

“We continually evaluate our processes with our local law enforcement,” Huntley School District 158 Chief Security Officer Adam Dean said. “There are a lot of layers that go into our safety.”

District 158 – as well as Crystal Lake-based Community High School District 155 and Woodstock School District 200 – have police liaisons on campus, which district spokespeople said serve as a potential deterrence against violence.

“We are appreciative of the close working relationship we have with both the Crystal Lake and Cary police departments,” District 155 spokeswoman Shannon Podzimek said, “and will continue to develop and refine safety protocols each year.”

Prairie Grove School District 46 has an emergency and crisis plan that is reviewed on an annual basis, and district officials met this week to discuss adjustments, Superintendent John Bute said.

The plan for the district going forward is to review the plans with law enforcement, and then practice any new procedures with staff in August, Bute said.

“This is very fresh on people’s minds and can be a very upsetting discussion,” Bute said. “I believe planning is vital. We always place the highest priority on the safety of the students and staff.”

In a letter to the community this week, Harvard School District 50 Superintendent Corey Tafoya highlighted the district’s counseling and support services.

“Our best defense against senseless violence is caring for one another and speaking up if someone seems out of the ordinary,” Tafoya said in the letter. “Please reach out to us the second you become concerned so we can work with our law enforcement partners to ensure everyone’s safety.”

Woodstock Deputy Police Chief Ray Lanz said these tragedies often “occur after the offender shares a plan with friends or via online platforms, which often go unreported to law enforcement for fear of being labeled a bad friend or a ‘snitch.’ ”

Lakewood Police Chief Mike Roth, whose department also provides school resource officers to area schools, said the government needs to “focus their energy and money” on mental health issues because this often is at the “core of many issues.”

Tafoya’s letter also goes on to offer various links to help students deal with anxiety over school shootings and how parents can speak to their kids about them.

Althougn Lanz said parents need to do what they feel is right for their own family, he encouraged them to talk to children about what happened in Uvalde.

“By having this difficult conversation, it may make them more cognitively aware of their surroundings, and the things they see and hear, where they can recognize possible warning signs of statements and/or actions of others,” Lanz said.

Mental health resources also are made available to help students struggling in District 158, and whenever a student is identified as someone needing help, there are a lot of systems in place to help with that, Superintendent Scott Rowe said, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, exacerbated those needs.

“I wish I could say the tragedy in Texas is unimaginable but, unfortunately, it has become a part of our children’s lives in this country,” Rowe said. “It’s unimaginable that we’re still dealing with it at the magnitude we are.”

This past month has brought mass shootings back to the forefront of discussion in America. Ten days before the Uvalde mass shooting, 10 people, all of them Black, were killed in a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

Rowe cautioned against the expectation that any district could take measures to ensure complete safety, no matter the circumstance.

“I think from our perspective, school safety is not a destination you ever reach a point where you know you’re 100% safe,” Rowe said. “You don’t have that luxury in life or in running a large organization. I wish we did, but that’s not a reality.”

Harvard Police Chief Tyson Bauman said the mass shooting in Uvalde prompted a plan for newer officers to visit Harvard-area schools and get familiarized with how they are laid out.

“As a police officer, it is a terrifying thing,” Bauman said of school shootings. “You have concerns because these shootings happen in big towns and in small towns as well. They happen all over the United States. It is one of those things, it kind of pulls you back into reality that this could happen here too.”

Bauman said one fully uniformed, armed school resource officer rotates between the district’s five school buildings five days a week. Every building is secured and requires visitors to be buzzed in at the front door and present identification. All buildings are equipped with surveillance cameras, and all doors around the schools are locked at all times, Bauman said.

“The schools are really good on maintaining that,” Bauman said. “They see you on a camera at the front of the buildings … even the officers in full uniform have to be buzzed in and provide identification.”

Should there be a school shooter incident, Harvard’s officers are trained to make “immediate entry,” Bauman said. “We would break windows, we would get in the school.”

The McHenry Police Department, similar to other police agencies, has a “strong” partnership with its city’s school districts, Deputy Chief Thomas Walsh said. They regularly meet to review and discuss school safety.

Since 2013, this relationship has resulted in “several measures [being] developed and put in place to reduce the chance of a tragic incident in our schools,” Walsh said in an email.

One tool, installed at McHenry High School, works similar to activating a building’s fire alarm and instantly notifies first responders of an emergency situation.

McHenry police also assign school resource officers to each high school and have a patrol officer at each grade school.

“At least once each week, the officers meet with their school’s administration and discuss any needs they may have,” Walsh said. “The officers also spend the time to interact with the staff and students so that the officer becomes a familiar and friendly face. One of the goals of this program is if a student has a situation where they need help from a police officer, it is not as intimidating for them.”

The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office “conducts annual rapid deployment training in collaboration with several municipal police agencies and fire departments from [around] the county,” the agency said in an emailed statement.

The training involves classroom presentations and live active shooter scenarios, requiring officers to work together in reacting to the active threat and enabling fire department personnel to provide first aid to those injured, the department said.

In addition, the patrol division conducts school checks within its jurisdiction, deputies certified as school resource officers visit schools to give school safety presentations, and those deputies work with school staff to complete an annual lockdown drill to practice how to react to an active shooter incident, according to the statement.

The Woodstock Police Department, which serves District 200, provides school resource officers to both Woodstock and Woodstock North high schools throughout the school year, Lanz said in an email.

For the past two decades, the police department has participated with other county police agencies in live-simulation active shooter response trainings in local high schools, Lanz said.

Drills are administered at all Woodstock schools, aimed at addressing school perimeter security and classroom lockdowns, Lanz said. The drills incorporate the latest and best-known techniques on how to protect the staff and students, Lanz said.

“This tragedy has been the topic of many conversations in the police department since it occurred,” Lanz said. “Underneath the uniform, many of us are husbands, wives, fathers and mothers that have children who are still in school. We cannot fathom the sadness and grief these families are feeling.

“Part of our coping is to learn from this so we can do everything in our power to prevent a cowardly, senseless act from happening here like it did in Uvalde, Texas, and too many other schools and towns over the years.”