Pitt County Schools have many measures in place to help ensure school safety, including:
- 14 SROs (School Resource Officers, who are active duty Greenville City or Pitt County police officers) serving 37 schools. PCS is requesting funding from the Pitt County Board of Commissioners for a school resource officer (SRO) for every school in the district.
- A policy of closing and locking all interior and exterior doors at all times to limit access to any potential intruder.
- Installing a buzzer system in all schools where a visitor can only gain access by pressing a button and sharing their reason for being on campus (many schools already these buzzers).
- Using the Raptor visitor management system whereby every school visitor is instantly screened against the registered sex offender databases in all fifty states.
- Plans to install secure corridors in all schools, where an additional set of locked doors are in place between the main entrance and the rest of the school to limit a visitor’s access until fully screened.
- Implementation of access control systems and intellikey locksets to further limit access to some parts of schools to only certain individuals who have a need to be there.
- Continuing to use security cameras for school grounds and pursuing funding for new cameras and cameras on school buses.
- Lockdown drills, both announced and unannounced.
- Continuing to have school-based mental health therapists available in each of our schools, and requesting that our Board of Commissioners and the NC Legislature to provide more school counselors for the purpose of preventing problems before they ever reach the level for potential violence in our schools.
- Asking parents, students and staff to report any concerning behavior observed to school administration, whether directly or using the “tip line” on the PCS mobile app. The app allows for anonymous reporting, as well as photos and screenshots of concerns observed.
- Implementing threat assessment & management teams consisting of school administrators, SROs, counselors, social workers, psychologists and more, trained in how to properly assess and intervene with potential threats.
Parents can help make schools safer by:
- Reporting any concerns or suggestions you have about security.
- Teaching your children to share concerns when they see or hear them.
- Supporting increased funding at the state and local level for increased security.
If your school goes into an emergency lockdown:
- Help keep the school as quiet as possible so as not to draw attention to student and staff locations.
- If your child has a cell phone, make sure that your child has their cell phone silenced at all times while at school.
- As hard as it may be, do not call or text your child during an emergency lockdown. To do so could create noise that might endanger your child as well as the other children and staff in their classroom.
- Do not come to the school expecting to be able to check out your child; for everyone’s safety, yours included, students must shelter in place until any potential threat has been neutralized by law enforcement.
Please give PCS feedback regarding safety measures by filling out the survey at www.pittschools.org under the “Announcements” heading.
