District, sheriff act on school security

The Sisters School District and the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office are acting to enhance security at the three local public schools.

Some of the funding from a bond that failed to pass in November was designated to improve entrance security in the schools, which have poor sight-lines and were not designed with security considerations at the forefront. While the current actions do not directly tackle those issues through remodeling, they would mitigate them.

Schools superintendent Jim Golden told The Nugget that the district is seeking bids on camera systems that provide a live and continuous video feed to monitoring computers to cover the entrances at Sisters Elementary School and Sisters Middle School.

"Those would be our first priorities," he said.

The video feed would play on the computers of various school staff members and would be accessible by law-enforcement personnel.

"There's several people that would keep those on their screen," Golden said.

Additionally, the district is looking into providing lanyards with "panic buttons" for staff. Those could be used in an emergency, providing a location of an incident within the school so that appropriate response could be activated.

The sheriff's office is providing additional law enforcement coverage for the schools.

The Deschutes County Sheriff's Office will be providing the Sisters School District with another 20 hours of safety coverage with a School Resource Officer (SRO). Deputy Neil Mackey is currently here on a part-time basis, and will continue in that role.

"This will mean that we will have full-time coverage by an SRO in Sisters," Golden said.

"This news is made even better by the fact that Don Pray, our recently retired SRO, has agreed to come back and help out for the rest of this school year," Golden said. "This coverage will begin on March 2 and continue for the rest of this school year. We will then budget in next year's budget to keep this position full-time."

Golden expressed appreciation to Captain Erik Utter for advocating for the position for Sisters.

While there is a law-enforcement presence in Sisters, and backup just up the road at Black Butte Ranch, resources are stretched thin. If deputies respond to a major incident at a distance from Sisters, their response time to an incident in Sisters schools could be dangerously lengthy. Having full coverage by deputies assigned to the schools makes for a more continuous law-enforcement presence.

Golden notes that it's not just a matter of a security presence. SROs build a rapport with students, which can provide information that can head off problems.

"Kids come to them with a lot of info," Golden said. "We just think it's good, preventative stuff."