On October 22, a phone call was made to North Penn High School with a tip that a student could be armed. Two minutes later, during the changing of classes with 3,000 people in the halls, the student, while in possession of a firearm, was taken into custody by security. Those two minutes rippled into a forever changed school environment, with security quickly tightening after the fact.
“Change.” It is a word that has been the overwhelmingly prominent word in the last year for North Penn High School. Change to the halls and walls being renovated and rebuilt. Change to the school board that faced sudden and unexpected turnover. The most visceral change of all, however, is not the change of old bricks or retiring school board directors. It is the changes seen and felt in school safety and security for students, staff, and faculty, largely precipitated from that one incident in October.
By far the most noticeable is a change that students and staff have felt every day from the very moment they walk into North Penn High School: at the building’s main entrance points, Evolv Weapons detection systems are now found as a permanent security measure, adding an extra layer of detection to the thousands of people flowing into the building each day.
“I’ve been in this business twenty-five years. I would say a lot of the change is really twofold,” Mr. Brandon Rhone, Coordinator of Emergency Management and Safe Schools, said.
Rhone explained that the needs of people- the needs of community members, students, and families- have changed over time for a number of reasons, one being technology and its ability to “create issues through social media, and information coming pretty quickly, whether it’s accurate or not.” On the other hand, technology has changed the realm of security as a resource when it is able to be implemented for safety measures.
Though present on a random or at-need basis prior, Evolv found a permanent position following the October incident. At the school board meeting that followed, community members expressed their frustrations that Evolv was not already a permanent fixture.
“The biggest change this year was the Evolv system. Students are going through that every day, so it’s definitely changed the way that we do things, where we allow students to come in in the morning and where we station staff. We had an incident earlier in the year where I think safety went to the top of everybody’s list of concerns, but I think [Evolv] has really helped people feel safe in the school again,” North Penn Principal Mr. Kyle Hassler said.
“Anytime you have [incidents] like that, it certainly always heightens the level of awareness. For some people who were talking about, ‘It’ll never happen here, not in this town, for all these reasons,’ it’s just smack in the face of reality. It’s like, ‘It did. Maybe I need to change my way of thinking.’ Fortunately, that day did not go anywhere near as bad as it could have. But, that’s not everybody’s story. For some people, that weapon in the school, that situation did end very badly and people lost their lives,” Rhone said.
Following the October incident, ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate) trainings were held for students, informing them about their response options in the event of an active shooter. Throughout this year, the Board of Directors also held discussions and brought to a vote the potential implementation of armed, sworn School Police Officers. North Penn also has maintained a “closed campus,” only utilizing main entrances and keeping doors locked at all times, and continues to utilize its surveillance system with artificial intelligence to detect threats to safety, such as a weapon on school grounds, that will immediately notify police and school administration.
There was once a point in time where systems like Evolv and training like ALICE were not discussed, and even viewed as something that could negatively affect school climate. There was once a time that it was thought tightened security and surveillance would make students feel unsafe or “like they were in a prison.” The image of school safety that once seemed so unimaginable is now reality. The security measures that once seemed extreme are the ones that community members, parents, and students demanded remain in place for good. This is the new normal, and there does not seem to be any turning back.
“I don’t know that we’ll ever go back to the way schools were twenty years ago. When I was in school, open campuses were a normal thing. I think those days are long gone, never to return,” Rhone said.
“I think that we’re always evolving, no matter what we do. We have to evolve into what deck of cards the world is dealing us today. We can only play the hand we’ve been dealt. In today’s world, this is the hand we’ve been dealt, where surveillance cameras [and] weapons detection systems are all a byproduct of where we are in today’s society. Twenty years from now, the next director of school safety at North Penn could be having a different conversation about what school safety in North Penn looks like,” Rhone explained.
While North Penn has introduced a number of security measures, district officials believe that at the heart of school safety is the people behind it. A people-first approach has brought a heightened level of attention to mental health resources, training, and education.
“We need to continue to take a layered approach to school safety, and that layered approach includes prevention and mental health support training. I would love to continue to double down on [these things],” Mrs. Kunbi Rudnick, Chair of North Penn Safe Schools Committee and North Penn parent, shared.
“I’m always looking at how I can be better today than yesterday, and how I can be better tomorrow than today,” Rhone noted. “I don’t think there’s a catch-all fix to anything regarding public safety. I think it is always a combination of people, resources, technology, training, and education. But, it always starts with the people. It’s people having the right mindset, it’s people having the right energy around doing the right thing. Until we can collectively get folks to wrap their brain around that philosophy and that mindset, I think we will always be fighting an uphill battle,” Rhone said.
For a projected seven more years, North Penn High School will continue to feel physical changes as it is renovated and rebuilt. While the construction is visible in the walls of the school, the deeper transformation is school safety and security, bringing changes with no turning back to what once was.
