LOUISIANA (KLFY) — A student-led effort to improve school safety across Louisiana is now law after members of the Louisiana Legislative Youth Advisory Council helped develop legislation aimed at strengthening campus security.
Among those involved was Everette Etie of Erath High School, one of two Acadiana students who served on the statewide council. Etie said the group spent the past two years researching school safety needs before working with lawmakers to create Senate Bill 450, now known as Act 901.
“Thirty-two members statewide. I was the first kid from Erath in a long time to make it,” Etie said. “We decided two years ago to focus on school security because there is no mandated legislation requiring certain types of school security in schools and making sure that schools are assessed equally. We worked with Senator Edmunds to pass SB 450, which is now Act 901.”
The new law gives every public and nonpublic school in Louisiana the opportunity to receive a comprehensive security assessment every three years. While participation is voluntary, the assessments are designed to identify security strengths, weaknesses and potential improvements.
The legislation also requires schools to report threats to the Louisiana State Police Fusion Center, where information will be analyzed to identify statewide trends and help improve school safety practices.
“It mandates schools reporting threats to the fusion center, which is a body created by the state police,” Etie said. “Those threats are analyzed and shown what schools are lacking, what schools have, how many times are we having fire drills, what type of threats are we seeing around the state so that we can come together and make sure we’re doing the right thing for students.”
Louisiana State Police will conduct the security reviews, with results shared with the Louisiana Center for Safe Schools to identify common concerns and recommend future improvements.
Etie said the council looked to other states while developing the legislation, including Florida’s school safety assessment model.
“Each state’s different and each set of guidelines are different,” Etie said. “The one that we looked at is the one that Florida uses. It has something as ranging as time to get kids accounted for with fire alarms, or it says, do we have a secure point of entry? Is there a school resource officer on every single campus?”
The council also used research and data from Vermilion Parish Schools to demonstrate how school safety investments can improve emergency response.
Etie pointed to the district’s implementation of the Raptor emergency management system under the direction of districtwide School Resource Officer Brooks David.
“So Vermilion Parish was super lucky,” Etie said. “Our districtwide SRO, his name is Brooks David. He was put on probably about two years ago, maybe three years ago, to take a $1 million budget and see what he can do with this. He went on and bought this program called Raptor. It’s an application that allows schools to be accounted for and it sends alerts out through the parish wire. He knows when a school is on lockdown, he knows when a school is on a fire drill. It cuts down times to account for every student. It cut that time almost in half.”
Etie said the success seen in Vermilion Parish helped show lawmakers that even if every school cannot make the same investments, assessments can help districts determine the best use of their available resources.
“We looked at what that $1 million budget can do to schools and we saw some success,” Etie said. “That proved to us that while not every parish can make the same equal safety improvements after they’re assessed, they can take their own liberties to see.”
Although schools are not required to complete the assessments, Etie believes the new law provides administrators with an important tool to improve campus safety.
“It’s about schools really applying this tool because they’re not mandatory,” Etie said. “They’re not required to get an assessment. They just have the ability to. We know that schools are not a one-size-fits-all. The assessment allows for a safety officer to address what’s lacking and saying now it’s your turn to take the liberties rather than we wouldn’t want to pass a law that says every school has to have this.”
Act 901 takes effect Aug. 1. Student leaders on the Louisiana Legislative Youth Advisory Council hope the law will help schools continue strengthening safety measures while allowing districts to tailor improvements to their individual needs.
