As students return to school the next few weeks along the North Shore and throughout Lake County, additional safety enhancements will be in place to keep them as well as teachers, administrators and staff members safe and comfortable in their academic environment.
For Township High School District 113 Superintendent Bruce Law, safety is about more than ensuring the Highland Park and Deerfield high school communities are protected from potential harm like a fire in the building or an intruder with a weapon.
“There is operational safety with all the things we do to mitigate a threat,” Law said. “There is also psychological safety, and we have to consider that in the things we do.”
Students walking into Highland Park High School on Wednesday had to pass through a weapons detection system at one of the school’s three entrances as part a new overall safety program for the district. Their peers at Deerfield High School, also in District 113, did not.
When the District 113 Board of Education narrowly approved the weapons detection system Aug. 8, Law said the plan was to wait until students were in both schools for a while to prepare them for the new entrance procedure gradually with some training.
Law rethought the timing for implementing the detectors at Highland Park after one of its students, Estiven Sarminento, a junior, allegedly shot and killed classmate Omar Diaz on Aug. 13 a few blocks from the school just days before classes began, according to prosecutors.
“A student brought a gun to school April 4,” Law said. “There was no evidence he was going to harm anyone. Sunday a student was (allegedly) murdered by another student. Psychological safety was shaken.”
With students adjusting to entering their building a new way at Highland Park, Law said school officials will start to quickly learn how to tweak the use of the system. It will make the implementation at Deerfield smoother.
“The rollout at Deerfield will be later because we need to learn a lot,” Law said. ”We need to see how it impacts the climate and culture so we can support our students. We expect a much smoother experience at Deerfield High School when we’re ready.”
Introducing the weapons detection system to the board last week, Law said the proper climate and culture at the schools is the biggest component of safety and cannot be compromised.
“We don’t want to do anything to harm culture and climate,” Law said at the time. “That’s the last thing we want to do.”
When students arrived, Law said they did not know precisely what to expect. The detectors in the District 113 schools are not as complex as the ones students would encounter at an airport. Whether their cellphone will set off the device depends on where they hold it.
“It makes a difference how you hold your backpack,” Law said. “Some glass cases may set it off and some won’t. Students will learn to adjust. They’ll hand it around the (system’s) sleeve with their computer.”
As the weapons detection system becomes more routine for the high school community, Law said lines will shrink. He and his staff are watching closely and haven’t noticed frustration from students. Just as the situation improved the second day, he anticipates it will get better daily.
Not all Highland Park schools have a weapons detection system. North Shore School District 112 Superintendent Mike Lubelfeld said his district considered it a year ago and declined to implement one.
“We reviewed multiple devices,” Lubelfeld said. “The layers of security we have added meet the needs of our elementary schools.”
District 112 educates preschoolers through eighth graders in Highland Park and Highwood. Most matriculate to Highland Park High School and some head to Deerfield.
Both districts also welcomed security directors for the first time.
The District 113 board approved the appointment of former Washington, D.C., Metropolitan police Officer Amy Oliva on Aug. 8 as its director of security. She has also served as an educational safety specialist at Waukegan High School’s Brookside campus for the past six years, according to the district website.
Lubelfeld said District 112, Deerfield Public Schools District 109 and Bannockburn School District 106 — the three District 113 feeder districts — hired former Wilmette police Sgt. Solveig Jurmu as their security director.
