District working to keep students safe, track them in upcoming school year
OCEAN CITY — When students arrive at Ocean City High School next week, they will find new security measures in place to help protect them and upgraded software that will help the school track them.
Interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. Scott McCartney provided a report to the Ocean City Board of Education on Thursday, Aug. 24, saying the district’s semi-annual reporting of violence and vandalism incidents has been increased to include incidents of harassment, intimidation and bullying (HIB).
He noted there were a total of nine incidents in the latest Student Safety Data System (SSDS) reporting, which he called “reasonable and acceptable” given the nearly 2,000-student population in the district, but there is “some work to do” on that front.
McCartney also noted that not all incidents reported were confirmed as HIB, vandalism or getting positive results after sending a student for substance abuse testing.
“For half a year to have nine incidents in total, that’s a low number, at least from my experience,” he said.
He also told board members and the handful of audience members present that new measures and modified past measures will be in place for the Sept. 5 start of the 2023-24 school year.
McCartney said they want to make sure the schools are safe and welcoming, but secure.
That, he said, is a “delicate balance.”
Expanding on that in an interview with the Sentinel on Friday, he talked about the ZeroEyes gun-detection software that is tied into the camera system at OCHS, HIBster anti-bullying software and new software that will have students scanning IDs when they arrive at school and when they enter classrooms. He said times have changed when people could enter the schools freely.
“The sad and unfortunate truth after 20-plus years of these tragic events at schools is that schools have had to respond in ways that we’re not entirely comfortable with either, and some of that is restrictive and for some that feels unwelcoming,” McCartney said.
“We get complaints from parents who remember a time they could walk in any door in any school at almost any time. Or if you were bringing your child’s lunch or gym shoes, the secretary might send you down to the gym or classroom to find your student,” he said.
Now there are double security doors and a table where a parent can leave the item or give it to office staff via a pass-through window so someone inside the school could then take it to the students. That part actually had been done for health-related concerns, including avoiding the spread of COVID-19.
“For some it feels restrictive, and it is, for purpose and reason,” he said.
“Our schools exist to serve our community, specifically to serve the children of our community,” but with other uses of the facilities, including by the municipality, there are “a lot of people coming and going. We want to be welcoming. We want it to be a useful tool for our community and our school programs, but we also want to be responsible to make sure the folks that are here are as safe as they can be.”
ZeroEyes gun detection system
ZeroEyes is a software “that lays over our existing video camera system,” he said. Through artificial intelligence, it identifies objects that could be perceived as a weapon — a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun or anything that looks like a gun, even a water pistol. If the software determines an item is potentially a weapon, it will get flagged and the ZeroEyes company and its team of retired police officers and military members will immediately review the video and make a determination whether it is a credible threat.
If it were, McCartney said, the company would contact the police department and school district “which gives us valuable time to put our schools into lockdown” or begin to respond to the potential danger.
He said in a lot of tragic school shootings there are students or folks already in the building who are supposed to be here, but have the intention to do harm. They may have set up for an attack in a stairwell where no teachers or other students are around, so the camera system surveillance and software gives the school that much more advanced notice to go into lockdown.
“What we know from all of the research out there, the faster we can shut down the access to students and people, the better opportunity we have to make sure our staff, students and visitors are safe,” McCartney said. “It gives us time to implement our critical procedures and gives the police critical time to respond and get on site and hopefully de-escalate the situation before it becomes tragic.”
The anti-bullying software, HIBster, will help the district navigate HIB (harassment, intimidation and bullying), be part of ongoing training for the staff and explain everyone’s role in reporting incidents. He noted getting that is a response to the SSDS reporting.
“It’s how something in the report helps drive some of our decisions and some of our training for the upcoming school year,” he said.
A majority of the incidents in the recent report were harassment, intimidation and bullying, even if not all were confirmed.
“We go back and look and see if we need to educate staff, students, the community about HIB reporting, what HIB is or isn’t. Or how to access the (reporting) forms. Maybe we’ve had instances where parents tell us HIB is going on but they don’t know the pathway (to report it),” he said.
Scanning into school and into classrooms
McCartney said students will go back to scanning their IDs when they enter through the front of the building, a practice that had been in place but ended as the equipment became less reliable.
“We are recreating and reinvesting into updated products,” he said. “High school students will scan into the building as they come into the front, which was a practice they used pre-COVID. And then that same software will help track students going from class to class.
“Now a student will be able to scan themselves into a classroom when they arrive, making it easier, quicker, faster for us to coordinate attendance versus students who are cutting or may not be where they’re supposed to be, and improve on our tardies (late arrivals).”
McCartney said it will help in the event of an emergency because the school will have a sense of where the students are or supposed to be. McCartney gave an example of looking for a student and, if they’re not in a class, figuring out if they went to the bathroom or school nurse and find them faster.
Another aspect of ID scanning is visitor management.
“Whether they’re vendors or parents, bus drivers or people doing work here, to enter the school they’ll scan in their driver’s license. The system will run a scan on the license to determine if there is a reason to restrict that person’s access, or call the police, or have them get other identification,” he said. A parent could be restricted in the case of a divorce and custody arrangement.
There are protocols for those who don’t have driver’s licenses.
“All these things are just to layer on top of our existing safety controls and ways to use technology to do an even better job of making sure the people who are in our school are here appropriately, where they’re supposed to be and … to make sure everyone is as safe as they can be.”
The interim superintendent said if the system works well at OCHS for visitors, it could be implemented at the intermediate school and possibly the primary school.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff