Community members ask questions on school safety in town hall meeting

HAMILTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WDEF) – Hamilton County leaders continued discussions of school safety and security during a town hall at East Hamilton Middle High Monday afternoon.

A panel including the Hamilton County Sheriff, Superintendent, Chattanooga Police Chief, and school security experts took questions from the public.

“What I see right now, is in schools in this district, unless you happen to be by a landline phone tied into the front office, you do not generally have an easy way to communicate with the SROs only, in most, only a few people have radios,” said one teacher who is also a parent.

He wanted to know what kind of technology could be invested in so teachers can quickly get a hold of someone who can neutralize a problem when an emergency happens.

“Remember the original push-to-talks that we had that kind of went away. Well now they’re bringing back that technology so that from your phone on this technology you can just push to talk and be able to get a hold of multiple people within the school itself,” SSI Guardian Certified Executive Instructor Todd Evans said.

The town hall brought out several elected officials, including some from the school board who shared their own thoughts on the issues surrounding school safety.

“Our Superintendent and our staff, they’re doing everything they can to be fiscally responsible and find some more dollars so we can fund some more SROs. Where is the city of Chattanooga? I’m troubled by that,” District 3 School Board Member Joe Smith said.

Lauren Gossett is a senior at East Hamilton Middle High School.

She wanted to know what concrete steps the school system is taking to increase the number of guidance counselors.

“We appropriated about a little over 400,000 dollars to increase the school counselor presence,” Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson said.

Dr. Johnson added that over the course of the last two years, the district has probably invested well over 5 million dollars in things like cameras and electronic locking doors.