SYRACUSE — School safety and security have become in more recent years a “front burner” type of issue due to shooting incidents and threats. Safety and security are updated as needed.

A request by a neighboring county sheriff has received attention. Elkhart County Sheriff Brad Rogers has promoted the idea among school districts in Elkhart County to have some staff members armed.

It is reasoned if a shooter somehow makes their way into a school building, personnel and students are left defenseless if no one on staff is armed because often police can’t arrive on scene until it is too late. Shooting incidents occur quickly.

For the Wawasee Community School Corp., though the idea of arming some staff has been considered, only the one school resource officer assigned to the school corporation is armed. Wawasee has chosen to be a gun free school corporation.

Generally, the possession of a firearm in or on school property being used by a school for a school function or a school bus is a felony according to state law. An exception is keeping a firearm locked in a person’s automobile trunk, kept in the glove compartment of a locked vehicle or stored out of plain sight in a locked vehicle.

Dr. Tom Edington, Wawasee superintendent, said teachers, staff and administrators would not be trained properly as law enforcement are to use weapons in different situations. “They are out of their element,” he said, if they were armed.

He cited a scenario for the sake of an example if a student was released from a class to use the restroom and a building lockdown was called for because of a shooter in the building. It’s possible an armed teacher, forgetting the student had been released from the classroom, could mistake him for the shooter and shoot the student instead.

Edington noted actual shooting incidents in schools are still considered rare based on history. Situations or conflicts which could result in a shooting more often than not don’t result in a shooting.

Wawasee, as other school districts do, has several security measures in place. Entrance doors to each building are kept locked and access is controlled by buzzing visitors in. Then visitors must go to the main office. Security cameras are in place and, Edington noted, eventually the cameras will be upgraded and connect with the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office and will also allow the 911 call center to access the cameras.

A protective coating, or film, has been installed on entrance doors and holds the glass together so it can’t be shot out so quickly as happened in Connecticut, Edington noted. And police officers, whether from Syracuse, Milford, North Webster or the county sheriff’s department, will drop in once in a while to make their presence known.

Edington spoke in general terms about security measures, saying it is probably not such a good idea to publicize all the details. He said, though, times have changed and years ago when threats were made by students they were never carried out. “But you can’t make even idle threats now,” he said, and everything has to be checked out.

“But, still, you can’t live in fear,” he added.