Tensions simmered at Tuesday’s Chesterfield County School Board meeting as parents filled the county’s public meeting room to voice their concerns. Much of the talk surrounded the use of metal detectors and clear backpacks in the county’s public school system. In the region, Henrico County Public Schools and Richmond City Public Schools already have similar policies in place.
Kara Abbott, a parent of a Manchester Middle School student, said potential school threats have made it difficult to get her daughter to leave the house for school.
“My daughter’s anxieties are not around her next math test, her grades, or even social issues, but they’re around school safety,” Abbott told the board during public comment. “If you truly care about keeping our schools safe, what is being done to protect them?”
In September, school officials closed Manchester Middle School Sept. 6 after county police received word of a potential shooting threat.
A Meadowbrook High School student was stabbed in a hallway Oct. 1, sending him to the hospital for treatment and closing the school for at least two days.
And hours before Tuesday’s meeting, police confirmed that a student at Thomas Dale High School had been arrested on outstanding felony warrants — and found to have brought a knife to the campus.
Some in attendance were irritated that they had not received word that that incident occurred at the school.
“I still haven’t found out yet,” Thomas Dale parent BeKura Shabazz said that evening.
A spokesperson for CCPS told VPM News in an email statement that parents were informed Tuesday about the incident.
“Parents received a message from a school official saying ‘I know that it can be concerning to see or hear about an unusual police presence at school and that is why I wanted to reach out,’” the statement read.
Shabazz is one of the parents frustrated with what she called a lack of school safety. She told VPM News her daughter was involved in a fight that broke out after she was assaulted by a male student at Thomas Dale.
Thomas Dale teacher Nina Pohlman is pushing for metal detectors to be installed at school entrances.
“We are bigger than Richmond and we don’t have them,” she said. “We’re prioritizing the wrong things. We’re putting money into the athletics [program], into new technologies … It’s a moot point if we are not alive.”
Pohlman said that she believed Chesterfield was reluctant to implement stringent security measures because of the optics of using them.
“It seems like pride and concern over the appearance are the issue,” she said.
Over the summer, CCPS spent about $5 million to retrofit older schools with vestibule entrances that were touted as a sort of “security airlock.” But those vestibules were mainly aimed at keeping out unwanted visitors to schools.
Board member Steve Paranto read a prepared statement before the meeting started, saying the board is looking into introducing new safety measures, including clear backpacks, metal detectors and more school security officers.
“There is much to consider with a decision such as this, and it is not a decision to be made lightly,” he said. “This board is listening, and we hear you.”
