Director of Marion County Schools goes over safety plan

MARION COUNTY, Tenn. (WDEF) — The Marion County School district is thinking of ways they can improve their school safety plan.

Parents of kids in Marion County schools say they want to be kept in the loop when it comes to school safety.

“We heard about the threats via from our children or from the news. We didn’t get any information directly from the schools and when we would call the school they would say there is no threat everything is safe,” Katie Tillman said.

After that a group called MC Concerned Parents formed. More than 200 people signed their petition. The Director of Schools, Dr. Mark Griffith, listened.

“He has said that there will be a safety summit set up at each school, so that parents can come and that we can get some more information and see what structure they are going to put in place,” Tillman said.

“Putting parents in the loop, we had to have a discussion with law enforcement as to when we do that. Obviously they are the authority on when we notify parents of the situation. And we know at that time the Sheriff will let me know, ‘look you might need to send this notification out and let them know that they were all clear,'” Dr. Griffith said.

On Thursday, Dr. Griffith, administrators and law enforcement talked about how to tweak their security plan.

“We went from doors to lockdown drills to active shooter drills, to notification of parents,” Dr. Griffith said.

Parents say they just want to know what’s going on during an emergency.

“That is all we want. To get better communication for the school,” Tillman said.