Safety & Security Update

Dear Parents, Guardians, Employees and Community Members,

With the school tragedy in Florida on Wednesday, February 14, concerned parents and community members have reached out to school and community leaders regarding Perrysburg’s response to this tragedy and the safety protocols in our own schools. While we all mourn the senseless loss of so many children and educators, we are collectively left asking why this happened and what we can do to prevent this in the future.

Make no mistake, school and law enforcement personnel work tirelessly to ensure that each child and adult in our schools is safe. We study, we train and we reflect in an effort to prevent and prepare. We do not operate based on the assumption that it will never happen here. We approach our training with the mindset: “Be ready when/if it happens.” This may be startling to families, but we regard this with the utmost seriousness and vigilance. We balance this tenacity with the realization that we serve students who may be as young as three years old and our conversations must be appropriate so that we do not invoke fear in our students. Our goal is to instill the knowledge to identify a potential threat and react.

Unfortunately, as reported in the February 15, 2018 edition of USA Today, the Parkland shooting was the 25th fatal active shooting at schools in the United States. For each generation experiencing these horrific incidents for the first time as a parent, fear and questions follow. As a school administrator who has been serving as a leader since the time of the Columbine tragedy, I have witnessed the evolution of school responses and trainings that have followed. From each tragedy, a new understanding of how to respond and prevent emerges. Schools continue to receive significant support from local law enforcement. In Perrysburg, our communication and cooperation with the Perrysburg Police Department is strong and continually evolves. The connections that we have made with the Chief and officers has led to significant training opportunities, as well as cooperation in real-time when dealing with potential threats.

In 2004, the United States Secret Service issued a detailed report after studying 37 incidents of targeted school violence involving 41 attackers from 1974-2000. This report was shared and reviewed by law enforcement and school officials and remains an important document in shaping how we can work together to prevent and respond to events. One point from this report that we continue to focus on is that in 81% of the incidents, at least one person had information that the attacker was thinking about or planning a school attack.

The district is not in a position where we can or want to share specific details about our safety plans for security purposes. While the active shooter scenario is on everyone’s mind now, we also must consider other threats and scenarios. For example, we have successfully dealt with crisis situations including two bomb threats and a serious medical event. In each of these real-life scenarios, employees and students performed as trained and resulted in successful outcomes. Each event that could occur may present itself in a different way, and so we utilize training such as ALICE (alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate) and practice in conjunction with the Perrysburg Police Department. Each different scenario requires our staff to understand how to react. Our district has been proactive in training staff and students in ALICE and how to respond to myriad scenarios. With the attention from the media and social media on this topic, we have struggled with what and when to communicate.

There have been two recent events that I would like to address:

On the evening of Friday, February 2, a Perrysburg High School student was arrested for inciting panic. Due to the nature of the threat, the time of day, the interviews with the witnesses and knowing the location of the suspect, it was determined that there was no threat to any people or property, and once the arrest was made that same evening, the situation was fully contained by the Police.

On the evening of Friday, February 16, a parent informed school leadership of an alleged threat that their Perrysburg Junior High School student had heard two months ago. As soon as we learned about the alleged threat, we called Perrysburg Police Department. They immediately investigated and determined that the threat was unfounded.

While social media may be an outstanding platform to share thoughts and opinions, it is not the best place for the school district to address safety and security concerns. We must always balance the public’s need to know with the Federal laws that protect students’ privacy as well as the security of our safety plans.

Determining the difference between a 12-year-old’s thoughtless statement and a credible threat is something that we do with the support of law enforcement officials. What to share and when to share it makes for a challenging endeavor. While not every comment may be reported to the media, please know that we handle each situation with serious consideration. Any parent, employee or community member is encouraged to reach out to me to discuss their concerns.

Although we work hard to provide our students and staff members with the safest environment possible, there is no guarantee that something like Parkland will never happen again. I want you to know that the safety of students and staff members in our schools is and always has been front and center in our minds every single day.

Peace,
Thomas L. Hosler
Superintendent
Perrysburg Schools