ABBEVILLE, La. (KLFY)– The Vermilion Parish School Board will hold its fourth meeting Thursday night, and one item on the agenda is bids for metal detectors.
News 10 spoke with the Vermilion Parish Superintendent, Tommy Byler, who talked about the importance of school safety.
“We are going to be accepting bids for a third set of metal detectors,” Byler said. “We kind of upgraded. All of our middle schools or high schools already have metal detectors, but now we’re upgrading to what’s called an open gate metal detector similar to what they’re using in Lafayette Parish.”
Byler said they borrowed the Open Gate metal detectors for a couple of athlete events and have already purchased a couple with the grant money they received. He said the Open Gate metal detectors will allow schools to walk more students through metal detectors every morning.
“It’s more of a weapon detection system,” Byler said. “They’re also more portable, which allows us to use them for athletic functions and other than entering school. Currently, we have metal detectors in all of the entrances of our school. We kind of use them randomly.”
He said the current Open Gate systems are located at Abbeville High and North Vermilion High, where NVHS is getting ready to receive a set.
“This next set we’re ordering, we will distribute those where we feel they’re most needed,” Byler said. “Anything that we can do to increase school safety. It’s not a foolproof system, but any extra measures that we can take obviously, the safety and wellbeing of our students is always of the utmost priority. So this is another step, and then we’re getting ready to move into a school safety grant that we were awarded. We’re getting ready to start soon of those processes as well.”
The school board meeting starts at 6 p.m. Thursday night. Check the agenda here.
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