CCSD Updates School Safety
Students arriving late to campus must enter through the main door to gain access to Vista’s unique buzz in entrance system.
October 3, 2022
After a brutal attack on a teacher at Eldorado High school on April 7 2021 by a 16 year old student, Clark County School District decided it was time for a district wide overhaul of campus security protocols. To provide students with a safe environment, Sierra Vista High School and CCSD took measures by installing new features to keep students safe and to assure parents that students learn in a safe environment.
Sierra Vista High School installed a new fencing perimeter during summer to create a single point of entry. Jessica Lee Lovell, Sierra Vista’s Principal informs, “The purpose of the single point of entry is to ensure we know who is entering our building at all times and where they are going on campus.” The new fencing around the school is not finished yet, but it is planned to be finished in the upcoming weeks.
Additionally, Sierra Vista welcomed police officers, Officer Dyer and Officer Jerram, to help maintain safety on campus during school hours. Sierra Vista is fortunate to have an exceptional campus security monitoring team: Josetta Fatues, Nicholas Jones, David Rucell, Martin Ruelas, Brett Terry, Penina Wiliey, and Nathanial Malihan who primarily monitors the cameras.
Teachers and staff members are required to complete training in order to react in different situations, and they are individually trained in emergency situations Lovell stated, “all teachers watch several videos on safety planning, evacuation drills, etc. In addition, Sierra Vista met with all staff to train them individually on emergency situations.”
Clark County School district also made changes, by installing additional cameras around the school campus and also upgrading the existing cameras which will cost CCSD 6 million dollars which will be paid by bond funds, as well as, distributing an instant alert system in nine schools (Basic, Centennial,Clark, Del Sol, Durango, Liberty, Mojave, and Palo Verde) around the district. As reported in Review Journal, “When a button on the badge is pressed, it can trigger a campus wide emergency lockdown or initiate a staff alert that will call for immediate help from the school principal, nurse or school resource officer to the employee’s location.” This instant alert system cost $11,000 per school, which will be paid by COVID-19 relief funds.
As the fifth largest school district in the United States enrolling more than 320,000 CCSD is planning to add additional changes around the district to ensure safety for students and staff members.
