News and Information

Federal grant will help Midlothian make schools even safer
District receives federal grant to get prepared for emergencies
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, September 14, 2007

By J. LOUISE LARSON / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Emergency preparedness just got a boost in the Midlothian school district, which is one of only 91 districts nationwide to receive a federal Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools grant.

Administrators J.D. Kennedy (left), Robin Bullock and Al Hemmle say the district is creating safe learning environments. Among the improvements: a system to identify sex offenders.

The $205,619 awarded by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is among the more than $27 million awarded to districts in 32 states to fortify readiness and emergency-response management plans and to help with emergency prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

The grants will be distributed through the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

The grant will allow the district to conduct audits and offer staff training to assess when students are at risk of harming themselves or others, said Al Hemmle, Midlothian High School principal and former assistant superintendent.

"That can continue to an even greater extent now as a result of us being awarded this grant," said Dr. Hemmle, who helped write the grant. "It will allow us to buy infrastructure to increase security in all our schools."

Superintendent J.D. Kennedy said the district has been working to improve the safety and security of Midlothian's schools.

"We passed a bond for controlled access to all the campuses so that people can't just enter through any door, they have to check into the office," Dr. Kennedy said.

The district is in the third year of using Raptorware, a system that conducts background checks on anyone coming into the building by scanning their photo IDs and running them through a sex-offender database.

In that time, the program has detected about a half-dozen registered sex offenders, Dr. Hemmle estimated.

"It just allows us to know if precautions need to be taken, and who we need to take precautions with," said Robin Bullock, assistant superintendent for administration.

Since 2004, the district has been doing random drug testing, as well as steroid testing. At first, the tests yielded positive results three to four times in a year, but that's been reduced to about once per year, officials said.

Besides detecting drug use, the testing has an additional benefit, Dr. Hemmle said.

"I think it helps some of the kids to keep from succumbing to peer pressure," he said. "They can use it as an excuse not to do drugs."

With the bond money, the district bought additional security cameras and established a crisis response plan.

"I think one of the reasons we were able to receive the grant was that the federal government saw we had been doing a lot to ensure the safety of the kids," Dr. Hemmle said.

The federal grant will help pay for an instant command system that will provide Internet access to the Police and Fire departments about the location of a crisis situation.

School districts that receive the grant money must commit to developing written plans that coordinate with state Homeland Security plans to prepare for a possible infectious disease outbreak, such as an influenza pandemic.

Ms. Spellings said in a written statement that providing a safe learning environment for children is one of educators' most important duties.

"These grants will support that effort by helping more school districts strengthen their crisis planning and better coordinate with the entire community to ensure the safety of our schools and students," she said.

In North Texas, the Joshua school district in Johnson County south of Fort Worth also received the grant.

Other Texas school districts to receive the grant include El Paso, Kirbyville, Lamar, Hidalgo and Pasadena, located near Houston.