Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will visit the Lake Hamilton School District campus Wednesday to discuss school safety, Superintendent Steve Anderson said Friday.
Anderson told The Sentinel-Record officials had reached out to the district about visiting campus for an event that is being planned by the Department of Justice.
Anderson said his understanding was that a roundtable discussion with school personnel and invited guests is planned to discuss school safety in regard to President Donald Trump's Federal Commission on School Safety. DeVos and Sessions both serve on the commission.
According to the Department of Education's website, the commission, which was established in March, "has been charged with quickly providing meaningful and actionable recommendations to keep students safe at school." Those recommendations will include issues from social-emotional support, effective school safety infrastructure, discussion on the minimum age for firearms purchases, and the impact of video games and the media on violence.
Lake Hamilton was among 13 school districts in Arkansas to be allowed to continue using teachers, administrators and other staff as armed guards in 2013. After first voting to revoke two districts' security licenses, the Arkansas Board of Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies said it would allow school districts to keep their security licenses for two more years. The panel looked at the matter of licenses for schools using school personnel as armed guards after then-Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said the permits should not be issued to the schools, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in 2014.
Anderson noted at the time that Lake Hamilton had a mechanism in place that has "worked for 20 years without a problem."
The district added a school resource officer, Garland County sheriff's Deputy Richard Huffman, in late May. All public school districts in the county currently have a resource officer.
The state's School Safety Commission -- comprised of educators, law enforcement personnel and mental-health professionals, and chaired by Cheryl May, director of the University of Arkansas' Criminal Justice Institute -- submitted preliminary information and recommendations earlier this summer on measures to enhance student and staff safety at schools.
According to the Democrat-Gazette, the preliminary report states that no campus should ever be without an armed presence when staff members and children are present, and it provides a menu of options for providing that security, including the use of school resource officers -- police assigned to a school -- and commissioned school security officers who can be district teachers, administrators and support staff who have volunteered and undergone training to have a gun on a campus.
DeVos, who was confirmed Feb. 7, 2017, has been involved with education policy for nearly three decades as an advocate for children and a voice for parents, according to her biography on the Department of Education's website.
DeVos served for 15 years in Michigan as an in-school mentor for at-risk children in the Grand Rapids Public Schools, her biography states. She has said her interactions with students, families and teachers changed her life and her perspective on education.
Sessions, who was sworn in as the 84th U.S. attorney general on Feb. 9, 2017, had previously served as a U.S. senator for Alabama since 1996.
According to his biography on the Department of Justice's website, Sessions focused his energies as a senator on "maintaining a strong military, upholding the rule of law, limiting the role of government, and providing tax relief to stimulate economic growth and to empower Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money."
Local on 07/28/2018