COLUMBIA, S.C. — Discussions of adding more metal detectors and helping students with special needs in critical situations were at the forefront of discussion in the Richland Two School District on Monday.
The Richland School District Two safety committee met for the second time this school year to begin discussions about safety policies for special education students.
“Every school in the district has a crisis response team, the principals set that team and they ensure that the staff is trained in what we call CPI, de-escalation training. We've been very fortunate this year, we've expanded that training to include our guest teachers. In the past few years, we've also trained our bus drivers, and in the upcoming year we look forward to expanding that to all of the staff in our schools," Katinia Davis, the Chief Special Education Services Officer for Richland Two explained.
The committee also began discussions about putting permanent metal detectors in each of the district's middle schools as well.
"With the metal detector expansion, my thoughts are to move that down to the middle school level. They have already started doing the safety screening and setting up at the middle school level, so we would like to shift those that are currently in our high schools to our middle schools and then get the more fluid ones for our high schools," school board member Lashonda McFadden said.
The committee also discussed hosting another parent university for Richland's Two families to discuss things like phone use online safety, and peer-to-peer conflict that begins online.
The next safety committee meeting will be held on January 8.