ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, N.C. — Rockingham County kids are getting ready to go back to school. In class, school district officials, police, and district leaders learned about new ways the district will keep students safe this school year.
The Rockingham County School Safety Summit took place Thursday at Rockingham County High School.
Officials from the district said the meeting was all about getting their school staff and safety officials ready and teaching them new things.
Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page said that the best way to keep kids safe is to talk to them. He said that the meeting gives them just that.
He said, “We just want to make sure that everyone has a great beginning and end to the year.”
Teachers were trained in many areas, such as how to calm down a fight, stop sexual attack, and give Narcan, a drug that is often used to treat drug overdoses.
Sean Gladieux, who is in charge of school safety for Rockingham County Schools, said that school staff also learned about the new safety tools that the district is putting in schools across the county.
“Anything you can think of, from building security to surveillance cameras to vape detectors to our AEDs,” he said.
Weapons detection systems are on the list of new safety gear. These are meant to find threats like guns and knives every day when kids enter the building.
Gladieux said that they are not waiting for a threat to move. In Rockingham County, these new systems have been put in every middle school and high school.
He said, “As a community and as a school district, we felt we had to do everything we could to protect our students, their families, visitors, and fans.”
In the end, both school and city officials agree that these new steps are very important to keep threats to schools at bay.
Rockingham County kids start school for the first time on August 26.