City school safety gets national attention

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SIDNEY — Sidney City Schools’ security measures are gaining national attention.

Earlier this month, Fox News filmed a segment about them. Monday, Feb. 26, a reporter and photographer from the New York Times were in Sidney to interview local people about the program.

Tuesday, Feb. 27, Superintendent John Scheu said that the Washington Post had expressed interest in talking with him.

Erica L. Green, of Baltimore, Maryland, a New York Times education correspondent who works in the paper’s Washington, D.C., bureau, and photographer Andrew Spear, of Columbus, talked with Scheu; Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart; Nicki New, of Sidney, who has three children in Sidney City Schools; Ron Cron, the head of the school system’s security team; and a teacher, who, as a member of the Response Team, must remain anonymous.

Green was working on an article “to add perspective to the debate (of school safety), as part of a larger story of how communities are grappling with this issue,” she told the Sidney Daily News, Monday.

She had done an Internet search for teachers who were either armed or had access to firearms.

“Sidney City was (a school system) that came up,” Green said. It was “probably” a Sidney Daily News story that caught her eye, she said. The Daily News has reported extensively on the security measures in place.

Followng the shooting in 2012 in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, a group including Lenhart, former Sidney City Police Chief Kevin Gessler, Scheu and others began discussing how to prepare Sidney City Schools for the possibility of a similar tragedy. From those meetings, and then a public forum, came the current security measures.

In talking with Green, Lenhart called the measures a “layered approach.”

They include biometric gun safes in the schools, to which only select teachers have access. Those teachers, called the First Responder Team, have received enhanced concealed carry training by the sheriff’s office. In addition, a uniformed, armed, sheriff’s deputy is stationed in each school. The full district staff has been trained by the sheriff’s office in an active shooter-response system called ALICE. Each building has a panic button to police.

Surveillance cameras cover hallways and entrances in all buildings and all doors are locked to outsiders, who are permitted to enter only through a school’s main entrance.

Green was interested in what she referred to as Sidney’s “middle ground” approach, one in which teachers weren’t armed but had access to guns.

“We feel we have been very proactive in this whole realm of school safety for five years,” Scheu said Tuesday. “We feel we have a very sound, conservative approach to providing as much protection as possible. We don’t mind sharing our program that we’ve had in place for five years with others that might be interested, including the New York Times.”

“I would like to have no guns in school, but until someone comes up with solutions … response has to be close, but teachers should not look like marshal’s in the old west. We have to enable schools to protect themselves,” Lenhart told Green. “I’m a Second Amendment guy, but I don’t know how the NRA sleeps. The Brady Bill helped, but at a gun show, you can buy guns off the table with no background check. I would encourage those folks in power … laws should be enhanced.”

Green expects her article to be posted on the New York Times website, Thursday, March 1. It will appear in print soon thereafter, she added.

New York Times Education Correspondent Erica L. Green, second from left, interviews Sidney City Schools Superintendent John Scheu, left, and Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart, far right, in Scheu’s office, Monday, Feb. 26, as New York Times photographer Andrew Spear looks on.
http://www.sidneydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2018/02/web1_Scheu-meeting-2.jpgNew York Times Education Correspondent Erica L. Green, second from left, interviews Sidney City Schools Superintendent John Scheu, left, and Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart, far right, in Scheu’s office, Monday, Feb. 26, as New York Times photographer Andrew Spear looks on.
Florida shooting sparks interest

By Patricia Ann Speelman

[email protected]

Reach the writer at 937-538-4824.

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