School security: How 5 area districts are changing to improve their staffing and methods

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Recent years have seen Butler and Warren county schools update their security measures to better protect their students and staffers from deadly, armed attacks by intruders.

Some school districts - as allowed by Ohio school law - keep many details surrounding their security plans secret to better thwart attacks.

JOURNAL-NEWS INVESTIGATES

The Journal-News investigated the state of school security in Butler County for a report that will be published Sunday in the Journal-News and on journal-news.com.

Some of the newer measures publicly disclosed include:

• Lakota Schools now require visitors to produce drivers license, which are scanned and verified. Visitors are then issued a photo visitor's, adhesive-backed tag, which must be worn while in the building.

Kings Schools in Warren County and Talawanda Schools among others in Butler County now use classroom door barricades teachers are to lock in case of an active shooting in the building.

Edgewood Schools are the first in the county to have armed School Resource Officers (SROs) in all its schools.

Madison Schools are the first in the region to allow some trained school staffers to carry or have access to handguns. School officials there have said up to 10 staffers are now authorized to have handguns.

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