After Parkland shooting, Beaufort Co. students head back to school with these 2 major changes

When Valentina Galindo, a senior at Hilton Head Island High School, initially heard about the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, she was shaken.

Although she had seen other school shootings on the news, this one — in which 14 students and three educators were killed — “really stuck,” she said.

Unlike with other school shootings that came before Feb. 14, Galindo knew a student who went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

“To know that it happened so close to us and to see this friend posting tributes to the victims on her Instagram, it was shocking to see,” she said. “... Because if it happened in her school and I know her, it’s not as impossible as it seems (that it could happen here).”

By May 25, 23 school shootings — in which at least one person was injured or killed — had occurred in the U.S. On average, at least one school shooting has occurred a week, according to multiple reports.

As concerns about school shootings continue to mount, the Beaufort County School District is implementing new safety measures for the 2018-19 school year.

“It’s a never-ending battle trying to keep all the kids and staff safe,” said David Grissom, the school district’s coordinator of protective services.

During the 2017-18 school year, it was revealed that, prior to the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, one-fourth of Beaufort County’s 32 public schools had not yet held a lockdown drill for the year.

It wasn’t until after the shooting — and after The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette had requested the district’s lockdown drill data on Feb. 22 — that at least one drill had been held at each of the 32 schools in the district.

Lockdown drills aim to prepare teachers and students for an active-shooter situation by giving them instructions on where to hide out of sight from a shooter. Grissom goes to each room in the building with law enforcement offering feedback and advice, he said.

Until this year, there were no requirements in South Carolina for schools to hold active-shooter lockdown drills.

But on July 2, Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law mandating that schools conduct at least two fire drills, two active-shooter drills and two severe-weather drills each year.

During the upcoming school year, the Beaufort County School District plans to increase the number of active-shooter lockdown drills to at least three at each school.

One of the three drills will occur during a passing period, lunch or some other sort of “inconvenient time,” Grissom said.

“You can’t do enough training for active-shooting situations,” Grissom said. “These are things that unfortunately are happening in our communities, and the more we can make our students and staff aware, the safer we’re all going to be.”

On top of the additional active-shooter drills, the seven high schools in the Beaufort County School District will be adding another safety precaution — ID cards.

Starting this year, high school students will be required to wear district-issued IDs on lanyards around their necks so faculty and staff can identify students as they walk into the buildings.

This will be a new policy at all of the high schools besides Bluffton High, which started using IDs last year, according to Grissom.

Amanda O’Nan, principal at Hilton Head Island High, said that previously only students who had taken school photos were given ID cards.

“They were more of a keepsake. We had no purpose for them,” she said.

O’Nan said the extra measure will allow everyone in the school to be “involved in the safety of our building.”

“Granted, I know most of the students in the school, but I don’t know all of them. And if you’re a math teacher or a junior walking in the hallway, you definitely don’t know,” she said.

“The IDs will be one way for everyone to ensure that that person walking in our hallway is actually supposed to be in our hallway.”

There is no plan at this time to extend the new ID policy to the district’s middle or elementary schools, according to Grissom.

‘Trying to help prevent students from making rash or bad decisions’

As a high school senior, Galindo understands the many obstacles her peers might be facing — academic or athletic pressure from teachers and parents, drama and bullying from other students and possible hardships at home.

Because of that, she said she worries that a student at her school could turn to violence.

“(The possibility of a school shooting) is a concern, because I know that some of the kids at my school are really aggressive sometimes,” Galindo said.

In the wake of the Parkland school shooting, Galindo and her friend rounded up a group of Hilton Head High students and created a new club called Students for a Better Tomorrow.

The group’s original purpose was to plan a “walk-in” at the school on March 14 to recognize the victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, but the students didn’t stop there.

On Tuesday, a handful of club members met to discuss how they will try to ensure that no student in their school feels so alone that they resort to violence.

The group plans to create uplifting posters for the start of the school year, educate students about looking for signs of depression and self-harm and, in general, lift morale among students.

“We’re trying to help prevent students from making rash or bad decisions that could harm others or themselves,” Galindo said.

“I want to be able to reach out to as many people as we can, and I know sometimes you’re not able to save everybody, but we can try.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2018 at 10:47 AM.