May 5, 2022, the day that forever affected our community. After that day the administration went straight to the drawing board to prevent tragedy from ever happening again. A solution they came up with to keep students safe was the use of weapon detectors. Administrators wanted weapon detectors to prevent students from bringing illegal weapons to school. With weapon detectors being so controversial, there are many different opinions among staff, students, and the community. After interviewing many different students, administrators, and teachers. Many teachers have stated, “It is a nice extra layer of security.” Feeling secure is one of the pros of weapon detectors.
One student who had a first-hand account of the incident had a completely different thought stating, “I like the idea of them, I don't know how efficient they are or how right they are because I carry the same things to school every day and some days it goes off and some days it doesn't.” This brings up an important point. How do we know that weapon detectors actually work and actually detect weapons?
Mrs. Parry, the school principal, was able to confirm that the weapon detectors went through extensive testing. She said that a police officer walked through the weapon detectors to see if it would alarm and tested a number of weapons. Although they detected all of the weapons in the extensive tests this does not mean that they will always be one-hundred percent accurate.
Every morning, all students must go through the weapon detectors. Several students reported it is irritating to take all binders, notebooks, Chromebooks, and keys out of the bookbags in the morning. Senior Frankie Lellio said, “ I think it's really annoying because the weapon detectors go off no matter what. Even if you take your Chromebook out, some students bookbags still set it off.”
If the school paid so much for these weapon detectors why don’t they always work correctly? After a very in-depth interview with Mrs. Sawicki, she provided some clarity on this critical question. “We have the capabilities of increasing what they will detect. Right now they are at a setting to detect weapons, but with that comes the capability for example the binders. Why they set off is because the spine in the binder is long and it's made out of the same length of metal you might find in a weapon.” Answering this critical question will hopefully give the students more of an understanding of the devices.
Although the weapon detectors are not the most efficient in the morning, they do increase the student's safety, which is the administration's priority. The parents appreciate the administration's dedication to keeping the students safe. After speaking to Adrienne Sepesy, the mother of a second-grade student, she said, “ I think it is a step in the right direction for safety.”