School board members at a recent Frisco ISD Board of Trustees meeting praised the response by school officials to threats that had been made against multiple Frisco ISD campuses.
The threats, which were made over the weekend on social media, resulted in the arrest of a 13-year-old girl, whose name was not released due to her age, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Jon Bodie, director of emergency management at Frisco ISD, addressed the board, first discussing Intruder Detection Audits, which seek to ensure campuses can detect intruders entering from outside schools.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, a survey of results from the state-mandated audits found that almost 5% of campuses were vulnerable to an intruder.
Bodie said he was happy with how the district responded to the recent threats during his address.
“I’m very proud of our district and how we responded to coordinate our actions, not only over the weekend but also today through a series of standardized processes that we follow for any emergency events,” Bodie said.
Frisco ISD initially sent an email telling parents that if they wanted to keep their children home from school Monday, they could without an absence being recorded.
Scott Warstler, chief operations officer at Frisco ISD, thanked the Frisco Police Department and the school resource officers for their efforts and said the district went into action as soon as they heard about the threats.
He also said there were certain things the district could not share with the community due to the nature of the investigation, some of which were discussed in the executive session, which lasted approximately half an hour.
“I think sometimes what’s hard for our community is we have to allow [the police department] to work through their processes and through their investigation,” Warstler said.
“I just ask that we have patience as a community and know that we’re not trying to keep information from you because we have to let the [police department] do their work,” he added.
Trustee Marvin Lowe also praised the school resource officers and police response. While nothing is 100% foolproof, Lowe said, he did not think there was much more the district could do to improve security, referencing what was shared with him and the other trustees during the executive session.
Still, other districts in the North Texas area have really struggled with security in recent years.
Dallas ISD, for instance, saw a school shooting back in March outside a North Dallas high school, which the district’s superintendent blamed on high crime in Dallas, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Before that incident, a DISD elementary school student brought a gun onto his campus. It was accidentally discharged, forcing a brief lockdown of the campus. The incident prompted fear in at least one DISD parent.
Crystal Hernandez told WFAA that when her middle schooler started sixth grade at DISD, she put him in virtual learning because she worried about his safety.
“We want to go back in person, but when you hear about all the stuff that continues to happen … guns discharging at elementary schools,” Hernandez said. “We’re not safe. We’re still not safe.”
