Page 26 - Campus Security & Life Safety, May/June 2022

environment where everybody feels included, safe and respected,” said Hough in a press release at the time of the announcement. “We proactively pursued the GiveEvolv program so that our students, staff, their families, and everybody who enters our buildings comes into a safe environment focused on the education and development of our next generation.”
Following a brief installation process, feedback from the school community at large has been overwhelmingly positive, said Sherri Kidd. Kidd serves as a special education teacher for Fayette County Schools, and she’s also on the security team that handles the technology.
“It's been very positive,” said Kidd. “We see many of the students—and the teachers, and the parents—all have a positive attitude towards it. There's not been a disruption to the flow of students coming through; nobody's late for class. The students know the routine. They all seem to—I feel like they feel safer when they come through. Like I said, they know the routine. They'll have their computers out because they'll need to check the computers. They go through, if they detect something, they'll just walk over to the table. It seems to be a positive impact on our school.”
Hough agreed that the new installation is a significant improvement over the “massive process” that was the school’s old metal detection system. He relayed an anecdote from the old days in which he got a phone call from a high-school principal about a weapons threat. “We had, oh, at the time, probably about 1,200 students in the building, and we had two metal detectors,” he recalled. “We had children lined up...it took about two hours to get the students into school during the day. It was just a very, very difficult process.”
Charlton also said that feedback from the district has been positive. Fayette used to employ its metal detectors on a sporadic basis. He said that in conversation with students at the school, his biggest takeaway was the two downsides of that system. First is the obvious inconvenience of such an arduous process. “They said, ‘When the metal detector’s there, it’s a huge pain because I missed first period, and I have to leave my backpack behind ‘cause they don’t have time to wand all of them, and blah blah blah.’ All things we’d heard and we knew. So far, kind of as expected,” he said.
“And then, they said, ‘But there’s also a second reason we hate the metal detector, because the next day, we feel really at risk. Because anybody who wants to bring a weapon is going to bring it the day after the metal detector was in, because they know
“Initially, when we started developing the criteria for GiveEvolv, one of the criteria was to focus on either schools that had had an incident, or schools in an area that had particularly high levels of gun violence. That faded, because what we realized pretty quickly was ... It doesn’t matter where you go—this issue is very central in the minds of any administrator, at any school, anywhere.” – Kevin Charlton, Evolv Board Member & GiveEvolv Chairman
Facility Security
they’re not going to do it two days in a row.’ “And then,” according to Charlton, “they said, ‘And the other comforting thing about Evolv is it’s everybody, every day.’ And so, I said, ‘All right, how many weapons do you think it’s going to find?’ And the kid goes, ‘None.’ And I was like, ‘Oh. All right. Then what value are we bringing?’ And he said, ‘Because no one’s gonna try. They know it’s
gonna get caught, so why would you try?’” Future rounds of the GiveEvolv grant program will focus on distributing the technology as widely as possible. Criteria for selection to receive the grant include economic need, “which is a big one,” Charlton said. “We’re looking for schools that can’t otherwise afford it. We’re looking for schools that are geographically diverse and kind of—we like diversity in terms of rural, suburban, urban, to show that this is applicable in any school. I think we’ll make exceptions if schools have been through a recent incident. Those kids need peace of mind, and that’ll move to the top of the pile.
But we want to be cautious about imposing ourselves when schools are dealing with the aftermath of that tragedy. That will be strictly inbound.”
Evolv hasn’t set solid dates for the next round of grants, but Charlton did say that it would be before the beginning of the 2022– 23 academic year. He confirmed that any submissions received during June 2022 would be well within eligibility for the next grant. Further information and the application form are available on the Evolv website.
“I’m very thankful that they chose here in Fayette County to receive that gift,” said Hough. “Very thankful. Our teachers—peo- ple like Sherri here—have done a wonderful job of being a great team member and under- standing what we have to do to achieve the safety and security of our students.”
Matt Jones is senior editor of Campus Security & Life Safety and Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at mjones@1105media.com.
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