HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Can any school and its students be protected 100 percent from an armed attacker?
That question has been at the forefront of conversation in Alabama education and political circles nationally since the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first-graders and six of their educators.
The answer, according to north Alabama educators, is no.
"I've listened to many law-enforcement officials talk about safety since the Sandy Hook shooting, and the reality coming from law enforcement - not from school officials - is that, if someone wants to take a shot, they will take a shot," said Madison County Superintendent David Copeland said.
Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely agreed.
"It's just like flying in an airplane or driving in a car," Blakely said. "There's always the potential for something to happen, but we are relatively safe in our community. The key is to be proactive and make sure we're doing something to prevent such incidents."
School officials across the state are focusing their attention on preventive measures. Educators and law-enforcement officials met with legislators in Montgomery on Wednesday to discuss ways to increase school safety, a discussion that included talk of arming teachers and improving mental health care in the state.
Dennis James, director of student services and security for Madison City Schools, attended the legislative hearing, which he said was productive because it "laid a lot of things out on the table."
One lesson of the day was that security measures that work for one school district might not work for another. A look at several districts throughout north Alabama shows that their security measures vary from district to district and, in some districts, from school to school.
In Madison County, for example, there is no uniform security measure across all the schools in the district.
"We have A to Z because we have some buildings built in the late 1920s and others as recently as 2010," Copeland said. "Some buildings, you can walk right in."
One security measure seen in most districts is school resource officers (SROs), who are sworn law-enforcement officers assigned to local schools by the agency they work for. A problem seen by many districts, however, is a lack of financial resources to bring more SROs into the schools.
Copeland said Madison County has five SROs for its 28 buildings. Additional officers are on his "wish list" of security upgrades.
"Just having that armed security is a big deterrent," he said.
Another item on Copeland's wish list, one he hopes to make a reality soon, is pass cards for all who enter the schools on a daily basis. The district's building-level administrators will also be going through active shooter training this summer.
"Another wish list item is a lobby or waiting area, where a person would come in the front door and have to be buzzed in to the actual school portion of the building," Copeland said.
He said that $24,000 allocated to the district recently by state Sen. Bill Holtzclaw will be put toward security improvements in the Sparkman High School cluster over the coming months.
School lobbies are already in the works in Madison's school district, which has upgraded its security over the past few years following a tragedy of its own. On Feb. 5, 2010, Discovery Middle School student Todd Brown, 14, was shot and killed in a hallway at the school. Fellow student Hammad Memon, also 14 at the time, was charged as an adult and is in the Madison County jail awaiting trial on a murder charge.
As the Newtown community has done following the shooting there, the Madison community came together for solutions after Brown was killed.
"We had all of the resources of the community at our fingertips," Madison Superintendent Dee Fowler said Thursday. "We had that advantage over other districts."
Based on the recommendations of a task force formed after the Discovery Middle shooting, all 11 of Madison schools now have a LobbyGuard visitor management system. The system requires all visitors to scan their driver's license and sign in at a kiosk.
The system then conducts an immediate background check, including the National Sex Offender Registry. If a visitor's name is flagged, they can be denied entrance to the school.
The school is also allowed to enter into the system a "red flag" list, James said. If a person's name is on that list, the system will alert school officials if that person signs in.
James Clemens High School, the newest school in the district, was built with both the LobbyGuard system and a second set of security doors that separate the student areas from the front lobby. Two other schools have also had the security doors installed.
"To get to classrooms, someone has to be buzzed in," Fowler said.
The district has already begun taking bids for the remainder of the schools to have security doors installed, Fowler said. It will cost $200,000 to have them installed in the eight remaining schools, a job anticipated to be mostly done by late March or early April.
The installation at Bob Jones will be included in major renovations being done at that school, the superintendent said.
Madison City Schools is luckier than some districts in that it has eight SROs for its 11 schools. Each high school has two full-time, and the middle schools each have one. Two SROs circulate among the elementary schools.
Bob Jones and James Clemens also have unarmed security officers, Fowler said.
In Huntsville, security was increased at all schools following the Sandy Hook shooting, and again this past week at Goldsmith-Schiffman Elementary, Hampton Cove Middle and Hampton Cove Elementary schools following the Jan. 4 slaying of Lt. Col. Alonzo McGhee outside his Owens Cross Roads home. McGhee's three children attend the schools and his ex-wife, Fillis McGhee, served as principal of Hampton Cove Elementary before she was fired in August 2011.
The couple's contentious divorce was finalized on Dec. 28, a week before the slaying. No suspects have been named in the case.
Huntsville school district officials have been hesitant to go into great detail about what security measures are in the schools, as well as what improvements they have in the works. Superintendent Casey Wardynski said at a Tuesday school board meeting that they "don't want to give the bad guys any heads-up about what we're doing."
Some campuses, like Lee High/New Century Technology and Blossomwood, have perimeter fences to help protect students and faculty. Johnny Giles, Wardynski's chief of staff, said all schools are being reviewed for additional security features.
"This may or may not include fences," Giles said. "That's still to be determined."
Those schools also have extensive surveillance via security cameras.
Some Huntsville schools are secured during the day, with locked doors that require visitors to be buzzed in. Others have sign-in kiosks similar to those in Madison.
In addition, the district has 19 SROs, as well as 35 other security officials, Giles said.
The district is working at all levels to improve security beyond what it currently has, Giles said.
"Besides the visually obvious measures, such as limited access and entry control points, increased police presence and increased security personnel at our schools, we are working on additional innovative ways to improve how we use our video feeds and how we communicate with our first responders," he said. "We're also continuously teaming with our principals and teachers to codify and clarify our emergency response plans (for), not just unauthorized entry scenarios, but everything from natural disasters, such as tornadoes, floods and fires, to traffic response and down to our individual response plans for illness and injury."
Other districts have been more vocal about the new measures put in place. In Arab, Superintendent John Mullins has dedicated $66,000 to putting armed police officers in each of the city's four schools through the end of 2013.
"We made a decision that while it's a substantial amount of money, there's no monetary value on the safety of our children," he said.
The enhanced security is provided by Arab police officers working on their off days, Mullins said. Their presence includes a police car parked prominently in front of each school - which is a "deterrent" in itself, he said.
"Statistically proven deterrents for a school shooting is having an armed officer," Mullins said. "There have been about 40 (school shootings) since the early '90s in America, and very few, maybe one, had occurred where there was an armed guard on campus. Usually those people seek out soft targets."
Arab's advantage is its size, with the system's 2,500 students spread across just four campuses. A larger system with more campuses, Mullins pointed out, would be more costly and maybe cost-prohibitive.
Fowler said in Madison, the district pays more than $250,000 per year for its SROs, not counting the funds the City of Madison puts toward its salaries and benefits.
The Arab school district was also in the middle of conducting safety audits of the schools when the Sandy Hook shooting occurred. The review so far has included the grades K-2 primary school and the grades 3-5 elementary school.
Each school now has only one point of entry during the school day, Mullins said. School office secretaries also have the technology to lock that point of entry from their desks if they sense danger approaching via video security cameras.
Safety is more problematic, however, at the junior high and high school because of the designs of the schools. Both campuses include separate buildings that frequently require students to walk outdoors from one area to another.
Safety audits have not yet taken place at the junior high and high school, Mullins said.
"Schools were not designed with safety in mind," he said. "Schools were designed for functionality and, in most places like Arab, as school populations grew larger, there was another addition that usually wasn't connected to the first addition."
One additional layer of protection the school system is planning to add, though, is ballistic film - which would strengthen glass windows and doors.
"While it's not bulletproof, it will prevent a window or glass door from shattering," Mullins said. "Parts of our plans are to install ballistic film on the entries to our schools. I don't think there's any total exemption from random acts of irrational violence. But I think we have to do everything we can to be prepared."
Eventually, Mullins said he anticipated visitors at Arab schools would have to be buzzed in - though a similar safety strategy was in place at Sandy Hook as well - and it would not provide "absolute security," he said.
"This is a complicated issue," he said. "This is a mental illness issue; this is a Second Amendment issue. But at the core of this, we want our children to be safe."
Law officers and school officials in Athens and Limestone County have also been looking at ways to make schools safer.
Before Sandy Hook, school safety was focused largely on middle and high schools where older students were considered to pose the greatest threat. But the rampage brought attention to the most vulnerable group of students - elementary school children.
In response, Limestone County officials are planning to add school resource officers to six elementary schools, and Athens City Schools administrators are considering adding police presence for the first time.
Blakely, the Limestone sheriff, asked for patience from parents while his officers and county school officials work together to formulate a plan for improved security at the elementary schools.
"It's a hot-button issue right now but we have to make sure we get it right," he said. "We're just talking about enhancing what we have and expanding it to all the elementary schools."
School resource officers are already present during school hours at each of Limestone County's six high schools, as well as the Limestone Career Technical Center. Three of the schools - Elkmont, Tanner and West Limestone - are kindergarten through 12th-grade schools, so the elementary students are protected by the SRO on duty for the high schools.
Tom Sisk, superintendent of Limestone County Schools, is determined to have trained officers present on each of the county campuses, but he doesn't have funding to cover the cost of placing full-time school resource officers at 13 schools - a total of about $1 million per year. He's begun looking for alternatives.
Lincoln County Deputy Bill Wood, who serves as a school resource officer at Lincoln County High School, stands with his patrol car outside the school this week. (Kay Campbell/kcampbell@al.com)
"What we're talking about doing for the elementary schools is to hire a pool of retired law-enforcement officers," Sisk said. Because the salary cap for retired officers who go back to work is $23,000 per year for 2013, Sisk hopes to hire two officers to work part-time and share coverage at each of the county's elementary schools.
However, Blakely said the plan is in the early stages and many details remain to be worked out. He said officers will need to be paid enough to make working worth their while and he is not sure how many will be interested. In addition, each officer will need radios and uniforms, as well as SRO and other training.
"I hope people with bear with us and give us a little time," Blakely said. "We want to make sure whatever we roll out is going to be something good and not just a knee-jerk reaction."
Sisk said the county system does not have funding to put a certified, trained full-time officer at each of the district's six feeder schools at a cost of about $75,000 per officer per school. That's why he began considering contracting with retired officers.
To keep officers under the $23,000 per year cap, Sisk hopes to hire 12 additional contract workers, or two for each of the six feeder schools in need of coverage, and have them share duties.
Sisk said he's discussed the plan with County Commissioner Gary Daly, who said the commission may allocate about $125,000 toward the plan. Commissioners are expected to attend a school board work session Jan. 17 at the Central Office on Jefferson Street to discuss the plan.
Sisk said Sen. Holtzclaw also appropriated $45,000 to Limestone County Schools for security upgrades.
"That's good seed money, but it doesn't pay for everything," he said.
Dr. Orman Bridges, superintendent of Athens City Schools, said he does not want to divulge too much of that city's security plan, but he said school board members are looking at safety improvements.
"We're looking at a consultant to come in and review all of our buildings and give suggestions for improving security," he said. The consultant will begin the review after school is dismissed Monday and then make suggestions to the board.
"We are taking seriously what happened up in (Newtown)," Bridges said. "We are trying to keep students as safe as we possibly can."
Lockdown and safety procedures are in place at the city's four elementary schools and at Athens Intermediate, Athens Middle and Athens High School, he said.
Employees and visitors are required to have identification upon entering schools, and Bridges said the school board is considering adding electronic access to the main entrance so visitors must be "buzzed in" to the buildings.
He said he is unsure of the cost of adding electronic access.
Johnson said continued training is important to student safety. In October, officers began undergoing Department of Homeland Security training for an active shooter event. Because many officers had prior training from differing facilities, Johnson said he wanted them to have the same information. "I wanted them to go through the active shooter school and put them all on the same page," he said.
Johnson said he and Bridges have discussed finding grant money to fund officers in schools, but making that a reality would require cooperation of the school board, City Council and police department.
"It would take a lot of eyes and a lot of people being involved to ever make this work," he said. "But that's the good part about Athens. We work together."
In Fayetteville, Tenn., a full-time SRO was added at Lincoln County High School after a shooting in the school's parking lot in 1998 left one senior boy dead and another in jail for life. A second SRO travels among the system's other seven schools.
"I, of course, would love to have a high-quality, well trained SRO in every school," Dr. Wanda Shelton, director of Lincoln County Schools, said Thursday. "That would be a wonderful thing for all of us. It would cost our taxpayers about $240,000 annually to add six new positions."
Shelton, who was teaching at Lincoln County High at the time of the 1998 shooting, has given a lot of thought to stopping violence before it happens. She is regionally known for her seminars on preventing bullying.
"I think that school shootings involving student shooters require more proactive interventions like our Crisis Teams and our STAR teams," Shelton said, referring to programs the system has started under her leadership. "That allows us to talk to children before they act."
But protecting schools against outside assailants is more problematic.
"I am not sure what can help prevent mass shootings," she said. "But I think the dialogues we are having will help all agency leaders work toward a solution."
Fayetteville city schools have security cameras in the hallways. Ron Perrin, a district supervisor who oversees the schools' facilities and equipment, can access feeds from those cameras in his office across town, and system officials are looking into making those camera feeds available to the city police, too.
That means if something happened in one of the city's three schools, police wouldn't be going in blind.
Although Fayetteville schools do not have a police officer assigned, city police officers include the schools on their patrols. They walk through the hallways several times a week - a frequency that has increased since the Sandy Hook shooting, Perrin said.
The buildings under construction for the school system will also have entrance lobbies visitors can enter, but then cannot enter the main part of the school without being buzzed in by the receptionist.
"We're doing everything we can," Perrin said. "The shooting in December shows all of us that you don't have to be in the big city for this to happen; it can be anywhere."
Despite all of the preparation and training districts are undergoing, there is no completely foolproof security plan. Copeland pointed to past school shootings, such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., as examples.
"Columbine had armed security," he said. "Sandy Hook had better security measures than many of our schools. You have to be prepared to respond."
Follow me on Twitter @cbonvillianHT or email me at cbonvillian@al.com.
Staff writers Kay Campbell, Paul Gattis and Kelly Kazek contributed to this report.