Susan Hartley, science teacher, has a child in kindergarten and first grade, both at Ballwin elementary. She is always alert to the safety of her children.

“When they have intruder drills and things like that, we have discussions at home,” Hartley said. “It’s always a fear, but how rational it is, I don’t know.”

To improve safety at the elementary level, the RSD Board of Education approved the hiring of four school safety officers late last month. Each officer will cover four to five of the 19 elementary schools in RSD.

Ty Dennis, district safety supervisor, said the new safety officers will be employees of the district and will have had prior law enforcement experience. This differs from school resource officers (SROs), who are police officers currently.

Many police departments have had police officers that stop by elementary schools within their jurisdictions in the past, Dennis said. With these four safety officers, the elementary schools will receive more direct coverage.

“I’ve been in my position for three years and the number one ask of most parents, with all the school incidents and different things that have happened around the country, has been more coverage at our elementary schools,” Dennis said.

In 2022, there were 646 mass shootings in the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive. This year, that number is already 155.

Dennis emphasized that safety is a top priority of RSD, especially with so many mass shootings shaking the nation. 

“We take into consideration what everyone is saying,” Dennis said. “We try to evaluate what is best for the district as a whole and do what we can to make everyone as safe as we can.”

Dennis said immediately hiring 19 school safety officers, one for each elementary school, would be a big investment for the district.

“We’re going to start with the four and see how that coverage looks,” Dennis said. “We will revisit it at a later date to see if we need to do more.”

Reilly Moroney, senior, is a cadet teacher at Kehrs Mill Elementary for Jennifer Busch’s kindergarten class. She helps the kindergarteners with reading recognition, writing and sounding out words. She also teaches a lesson once a month.

Moroney said the district made a good decision by hiring the four school safety officers to cover the elementary schools.

“I’m not there for long enough to see a big difference with that,” Moroney said, “but I think anything to keep our schools safe is a good thing.”

Jennifer Cooper, school counselor at Kehrs Mill and Wildhorse Elementaries, said the elementary counselors are focused on the social and emotional wellbeing of students. 

“Everytime we hear of any sort of mass shooting in the country, whether it be at a school or not at a school, as people, it makes us uncomfortable and worried,” Cooper said. 

Cooper said intruder drills are an unfortunate necessity to keeping everyone at school safe and prepared. The schools always communicate when there will be an intruder drill, so parents can have the needed conversations with their children.

“It really is about empowering our children with that knowledge of what they should do if they happen to be in that scary situation,” Cooper said. “Our teachers lead that and they have those discussions with the kids.”

While the officers at the elementary schools most definitely improve school safety, Cooper said they also are an important part of the school community.

“The kids are comfortable around them and they enjoy them,” Cooper said. “They’re out doing recess duty and they’re doing lunch duty. They’re embedded into our school system, and it creates a really beautiful bridge between the community and the school.”

This story was originally published on Marquette Messenger on April 24, 2023.