Here at Larned, among all the other changes that are going on in our school, we’re improving our security and safety. Something new in this 2022-2023 school year, was our school has brought school resource officers. Officer Marc Perez and Officer Nick Delaney were selected to be a part of the tribe and monitor students’ behaviors. Another thing that has continued on from past years is our drug dogs. The school board and administration believes that their presence at our school will keep our students safe and have them feel like they are in a safe environment. In addition to having our SRO and drug dogs around, students also feel as if we need to improve some of our security equipment such as the security cameras. 

A big part of our security system is our drug dogs. They come to the school to check up and scope out the premises to make sure there’s not any illegal substances on school property. When the drug dogs are here, no one knows about it. Their job is to catch the students who decide to bring illegal products on school property such as vapes, alcohol, and other drugs. The main reason no students know about them coming is because if the school told everyone when the drug dogs were going to be there on a certain date, then kids would have time to prepare to get those substances off school property. Doing so would not fix anything because they would just bring it right back after the drug dogs have left. However the drug can only detect the hard drugs and firearm equipment such as gunpowder. 

Our other form of security at LHS is our school resource officers. This year the school board and administration thought it would be in the best interest to provide our school with a resource officer to help deter set behaviors. One goal that the officers have is to encourage student attendance. They monitor the hallways and make sure every student is where they need to be by the time the bell rings. They are the liaison between the school and law enforcement outside of the school. “The main goal for the SRO is to build relationships with the student body and families, and face them with law officers in the hopes that they are supportive of law enforcement and that if they need him, they will go to him to solve problems within the school,” commented school board president Brent Hemken. Training was not required to be an SRO, but this job was different from being a regular officer. The training was important because it educated him on knowing how to deal with kids rather than adults, even though he was already a certified officer. Officer Marc Perez attended the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO). This program lasted for one week and by the end of it, SRO Perez was going to be certified. 

Lastly, one thing our school would like to improve is our security cameras. There are a few cameras that don’t function properly in our school and that can become unfortunate when someone does something wrong and we can’t catch it. Instances have happened where cars have been damaged in the parking lot and no one was held responsible for it because the cameras didn’t catch it. Improving our security cameras and putting in the money to replace the ones that don’t work, reduces the chance of someone or something getting damaged.