Henderson County aims to be first in North Carolina to have armed forces at schools

HENDERSON - As school children in Henderson County spill out onto playgrounds, line up in hallways and meet for activities, they could soon be mingling with armed guards dressed in plain clothes.

Sheriff Charles McDonald hopes to make sure that’s true in all 23 public schools in Henderson by next school year in what could be a first in North Carolina.

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 dead, districts nationwide are grappling with heightened fears and increased threats that have led to a higher number of lockdowns.

Threats of violence to schools have led to at least 18 calls to law enforcement in Henderson County schools since January. There have been two lockdowns since February.

McDonald’s plan – which the sheriff acknowledges is still being put together – would rely on a mix of school resource officers who are deputies and “armed forces” made up of people with military or law enforcement backgrounds who are not deputies but paid hourly by the department.

Some Western North Carolina school districts, like Swain and Yancey, have focused on updating old buildings to make them safer. Others, like Buncombe and Asheville City Schools, have turned to proposing more holistic opportunities for students to learn coping skills to manage stress.

Then there is Henderson, where McDonald said parents and other community members wanted aggressive action on multiple fronts.

“There was something about Parkland that put everybody in a much higher state of alarm, and we could feel the anxiousness of parents being transferred to kids,” McDonald said. “We knew right then we would have to come up with something.”

While McDonald and school and county officials continue to iron out plans for using an armed force to defend school campuses, other groups have started initiatives of their own.

Parents have organized Facebook groups to share news of threats and to facilitate conversations on safety.

Henderson gun store owner Debra Jackson has started offering free classes for teachers who want to learn how to carry a concealed weapon and is hosting a separate safety class in mid-April where McDonald will be one of the main guests.

Henderson County Schools Superintendent Bo Caldwell said he knows people outside the county might view the initiatives as extreme, but that’s not what concerns him.

“We are always erring on side of safety and we are always doing what’s best,” said Caldwell, who has no law enforcement or military background, but was a teacher for years. “We are going to provide security but we are not going overboard with enforcement. The children are not going to see school changed.”

Fighting online threats with armed forces

McDonald first announced his plan for having armed guards in plain clothes carrying handguns at all schools by next fall at a press conference in early March, after a series of lockdowns had raised anxieties.

School board Chairwoman Amy Lynn Holt said she saw those worries on the faces of distressed parents and teachers at school safety meetings following Parkland.

One teacher openly wept during a community town hall meeting, Holt said.

“The first lines of defense are teachers and staff members and that’s a huge responsibility,” Holt said. “They would die for these children without a shadow of a doubt.”

As the number of threats leading to lockdowns entered double digits, county commissioners met with school board members and McDonald to search for new ideas for increasing school safety.

The threats – said aloud, made through social media and written on school walls - had gotten to the point of being overwhelming, said Caldwell, who is charged with securing 23 schools and 13,5000 students.

“We have to take them all seriously,” Caldwell said. “So, we collaborate with the sheriff’s office when we have one report of a threat and vice versa, and we are now jointly working on it together.”

Immediately following the March 15 press conference, McDonald stationed a small number of number of plain-clothed, armed deputies at school campuses, in addition to school resource officers.

Now, he said he working on stationing armed forces at all 23 campuses by next fall.

North Carolina allows sheriffs to establish school safety programs using armed guards, but those guards must have experience as either sworn law enforcement officers or military police officers with a minimum of two years' service.

McDonald said he's still seeking funding to pay his armed services an hourly rate.

Following Henderson's lead, Stanly County east of Charlotte recently sought approval from its school board to provide armed, non-salaried volunteer guards in schools. Other rural counties are in the process of doing the same.

There will be challenges, such as finding mentally and physically equipped volunteers, providing enough funding to pay for the hourly security forces and hiring people who can easily blend in, as well as interact with students if need be, McDonald said.

Today, most deputies patrolling schools are using their days off to monitor the campuses the way McDonald promised parents they would. Some are working seven days straight, McDonald said, and he is worried about burning out his staff while he comes up with a lasting plan.

“This is not just a funding issue, but it’s hard to find the best people and be able to train them,” McDonald said. “We thought about hiring regular deputies, since they are easier to find, but the cost will be too much.”

To hire and train one new deputy fresh off the street costs the sheriff’s office close to $150,000. For every three deputies McDonald hires, he said he needs to hire a fourth as a shift relief, so deputies can take sick days and vacations.

The sheriff’s office cannot afford that for this security plan, he said, but he also doesn’t want to compromise on the quality of the armed personnel he aims to hire.

“We need to figure out what will meet the needs of the schools since we don’t want to put people in the district who are not prepared for a violent outsider to intrude,” McDonald said. “We are not looking for old, retired military or cops that can’t meet certain physical or psychological standards. We will use the same vetting process that we use to hire deputies.”

In addition to armed forces at schools, the district has created a safety team comprised of hand-picked parents, school board members, principals, administrators and emergency medical responders.

“We are doing this in layers with everyone in the community focusing on our schools,” Caldwell said. “We are also surveying each facility to see what we could do to make them safer for children. Every school is unique and has its own set of problems.”

Signs are being made to be placed at each campus warning an intruder that there are armed guards dressed in civilian clothes monitoring hallways.

Students making the threats are facing harsher punishments than usual, with Holt even suggesting that they should all be locked up and taken to court.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy for this,” Holt said. “I say arrest them, they can always go to court later and a charge can be dropped, but our kids need to know it’s serious.”

Parents and students rise up

Wendy Sidorovic says she bursts into tears when the phone rings and the school district leaves an automated message on her machine informing her of another school shooter threat. Since Parkland, she was rattled with anxiety at the thought of dropping her daughters off at school and never seeing them again.

That was until she decided to do something about it.

Wendy and her husband, Mike, started the Henderson County Parent Association Facebook page last month as a mechanism for parents to communicate with one another and share information that the school district often doesn’t disclose.

Parents text and Facebook message students inside the schools to get current updates and details the school does not typically provide families, which parents in Henderson share on their group page.

“I don’t want any kid to be killed before we can do as much as we can and be proactive,” said Sidorovic, who has two daughters in the school system. “We must stand together now and not wait another second.”

Mike Sidorovic has gone beyond the Facebook group and joined McDonald’s school safety team.

“What we keep seeing on TV daily is another school shooting threat,” he said. “Children should be able to go to school and be educated without being worried of someone shooting them.”

The Sidorovics said they support McDonald’s mission of adding armed guards to the school – “whatever is necessary at this point,” Wendy said.

But as Mike Sidorovic has attended more meetings as a member of the safety team, he said he has heard more parents say they want to avoid schools becoming jails or monitored as a police state.

“What I tell people is that children need to be confident that they shouldn’t be worrying about their safety,” Mike said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen and I pray what happened in Parkland won’t happen here, but it easily could. I think it’s a good idea and it gives me peace of mind.”

Students, too, are afraid but have embraced the idea of seeing armed guards at their schools.

Cadence Vick, 16, attends the Innovative Early College. Her school has had four lockdowns and four students have been arrested for communicating mass-shooting threats.

She admits to feeling unsafe at school, and she is sad that it has gotten to the point where the county should provide armed forces to keep students safe.

“What worries me is that people have access to guns and there is no way of knowing who has them,” Vick said. “We don’t go through metal detectors or get our bags checked.”

She said she is not yet at the point where she is too afraid to go to school, but that she is ready for something to be done, even if it means armed forces patrolling her hallways carrying concealed weapons.

“Armed guards are slightly scary, to be honest, since we don’t know everyone’s mental stability,” Vick said. “But I think it is necessary for our safety and is the best route since we need to increase school security.”

Savannah Wheeler, 17, is a senior at West Henderson High School, which is one of a handful of campuses in the county that has faced high numbers of threats.

She said she has never been afraid to go to school, but she is afraid of the growing number of threats and lockdowns.

Wheeler, too, approves of having armed forces stationed around the school district.

“I think it is a great idea,” Wheeler said. “I am grateful for it because they are there to protect us and I should be grateful.”

Classes to arm teachers

Debra Jackson, owner of Fruitful Season Pistol Packing, said she shot her first rifle when she was 9 at a YMCA outing. She said she never forgot the adrenaline rush or the sheer joy of shooting a gun.

“I remember they laid us on a mattress under a shed on the edge of the woods and being excited about it,” Jackson said. “I shot enough to get a National Rifle Association certificate.”

Jackson carries a concealed weapon with her at all times and loves educating people in gun safety.

She approves of McDonald’s plan for armed services to increase school safety, but she doesn’t think it’s enough. If the law ever allows it, she said teachers should be free to carry guns if they wish.

She has since started offering free classes to teachers in and around Henderson who are interested in one day carrying a concealed weapon on school campuses, so if the law ever changes, teachers will be ready.

“The most cost-efficient way to do it would to be for teachers to be armed who are willing to do so,” Jackson said. “These shootings will keep happening if we don’t give teachers this right.”

On April 7, Jackson is hosting a school safety education awareness event, organized alongside members of the Asheville Tea Party. McDonald, Commissioner Grady Hawkins and school board members are speaking.

The purpose is to find out what plans are in place, how resources are being coordinated, the timeline of implementation and to assure the concerns of parents, grandparents and citizens of Henderson that their concerns are being heard, the press release said.

Jackson also plans on advertising her free gun training classes for interested teachers.

“It’s a God-given and constitutional right to carry guns,” Jackson said. “The best way to prevent a violent attack is to avoid it, and the best way to avoid it is to be armed and prepared.”