ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — Normandy School leaders are making a $400,000 investment to step up security at all seven of its schools. It includes new security officers to complement police officers on campuses.
Back in January, 5 On Your Side covered the viral video of an altercation showing a Normandy High teacher and student outside a classroom.
"I sincerely believe we could have probably drew some urgent attention to that before it escalated,” Superintendent Dr. Michael Triplett said.
He is excited about a new security measure his district is now rolling out. Teachers and school staff will get new security badges. They can press the badge three times for minor situations.
"It could be a student skipping. It could be a student cursing a teacher out. It could be a student being non-compliant…Whatever team the principal deems as a responder, that team goes to that incident,” he explained.
Pressing the badge eight times notifies police.
"It automatically shuts your school down and you have strobe lights all over the place. It shuts your computer down. It puts ‘Alert. School on lockdown’," Triplett added.
Normandy Schools just hired five new security officers to complement the three school resource officers at its middle and high schools.
Security Coordinator Norman Campbell said they haven't recovered any guns this school year.
"We recovered things that would be used in a weapon, like magazines, bullets…" Campbell said. "We get more drug paraphernalia than we do anything else."
So this year, the district added a third metal detector at the middle and high schools. Norman Campbell said Normandy also added some 50 surveillance cameras this year. He says there are cameras inside of every classroom in the district.
"That's been one of our initiatives this year to go through and make sure our cameras are hitting all our blind spots,” he said.
This year Normandy also rolled out a district-wide radio system. The security coordinator can communicate with staff at every school at one time. Campbell says that’s helpful when there's a major emergency.
The district is still looking to hire two more security officers.