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On Monday, Troup County School System Safety Director Andrew Calhoun gave an update on ongoing school safety efforts.

“It’s more prevalent now, more so than ever, given the facts of the tragedy of what happened in Winder a few weeks ago,” Calhoun said. “It’s going to take a long time for those folks to recover from that tragic incident, but we’re doing a lot of things here in Troup County to hopefully mitigate and prevent such tragedies.”

Calhoun said firstly, the schools have to build a strong relationship with law enforcement. He said he is in constant contact with Troup Emergency Management Director Zac Steele as well as the sheriff’s office and local police departments.

“We’re in contact every day. I talk to these guys every single day, either via text or phone calls. And it’s not just about school safety. It’s about athletic event safety. We actually meet weekly,” he said.

He said part of the safety plan on a school level is safety drills, whether fire, tornado or active shooter. They do them at different times throughout the day as well to make sure kids know what to do regardless of whether it’s during arrival, lunch or dismissal.

Calhoun said one of the biggest measures is that schools are now in a constant state of soft lockdown, which means exterior and classroom doors are closed and locked at all times. He said they also regularly test this with attempts to breach the school through exterior doors in order to better train staff.

“Outside of trying to breach, we have a checklist that we’re going through. We’re looking for certain things on those site visits, whether it be how much of the walls are covered for the fire code and different things like that. We go through those checklist items with local law enforcement, emergency management and the fire department,” Calhoon said. “We then do routine walkthroughs performed by law enforcement at all Troup County schools, allowing officers to become familiar with those layouts in the schools.”

Another step to improve safety is the Centegix ID badges worn by all staff members at Troup County Schools. The badges allow staff to directly alert administrators and even police in the event of an emergency, all while automatically providing their location within the schools.

Calhoun said the new Checkmate management system verifies everyone checking a student out of school.

When a parent comes to check their student out, they have to show photo identification, and they are checked by the state national databases for the sex offender registry to make sure that person is clear to check out the student.

Calhoun said every school also has “Code Valentine,” where staff are in place that are trained in CPR, first aid and AED training so that staff can respond and give assistance until the paramedics arrive.