2/23/18

(Cleveland)- School threats and student safety is constantly being talked about lately and White County Board of Education took several minutes during their meeting Thursday  night to discuss the issue.  Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jeff Wilson shared with the board the many different avenues that they use  in addressing school safety. 

Wilson said they will continue to add to those options, “ we going to continue to look at ideas, we have other ideas we are going to look at that might be some things that we as a school system want to do to ensure safety, and we will be bring those forward,” said Wilson.

Dr. Wilson said a costly item, mental health advisers,  could help the situation saying “  I truly  believe that if  we could hire a mental health counselor  at the middle school and a mental health counselor at the high school  it would really help diminish the opportunity for somebody to come in and do this, and it is a cost  and it is something we have to talk about,” 

He further stated, “ we are  in very deep discussions about alternative school and offering some kind of alternative school setting.”  

Wilson said the school system had, prior to the recent Florida school shooting,  scheduled an Emergency Drill at one of the schools during the upcoming Spring Break  and White County Emergency Management Agency Director David Murphy and Georgia Emergency Management Agency officials will be doing a safety walk through next week checking out safety concerns at each of the county schools. 

Prior to the safety discussion the board heard from a concerned parent, Carla Puchstein  who,  on one hand complemented the school on the handling  of a recent school safety concern,  but then expressed concern about the handling of a  threat overheard by her daughter back in October at the  Middle School in Cleveland.  

 She told the board that if the boy,  who allegedly made that  threat,  is allowed to come back to school she will take her daughter out of the school system. 

School Board Chairman Missy Jarrard told her, “ we hear you, we’re making notes and will talk about everything.”