Guns, drugs and worries: KCK district details the safety issues at one high school

Wyandotte High School has faced a series of incidents involving weapons and guns on or near campus this school year, and on Thursday, the superintendent took the unusual step of holding a press conference to address the security threats and the community’s concerns.

The Kansas City, Kansas, school district released a report on 10 incidents at the school during the first semester. The first week of classes, for example, a student was arrested after bringing a gun to school.

School Superintendent Anna Stubblefield spoke with reporters after a former employee leaked information about the incidents.

“Unfortunately, our students are young people, they make decisions that sometimes are not always the best decisions. As educators, our first and foremost priority is to keep them safe,” Stubblefield said. “We hold them accountable, but we also want them to grow and learn and make different decisions in the future.”

Stubblefield, though, said she was not sure if the problems have worsened compared to previous years. She said the district noticed an uptick in behavioral issues last school year, along with districts across the country, as students returned to classes after virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. In several districts, teachers have said it has become more difficult to navigate student behavioral issues this school year due to ongoing staff shortages.

She also said she did not have the data readily available to say whether Wyandotte High School is an outlier in the district or metro area.

She said that problems in the broader community, involving access to weapons and drugs, seep into KCK schools. But she argued that the district is dealing with many of the same issues as other area districts, small and large, urban, suburban and rural.

“As far as physically having a gun in the school this year, that did happen at Wyandotte High School. That didn’t happen at all of our high schools,” she said. “Our schools are a reflection of our community. So we are navigating through these different things. But I will also say that other districts are too.”

In August, one student was arrested and another was detained at Wyandotte High School. Administrators were informed that someone had brought a gun to school, and then found the student inside the school’s cafeteria.

The school has metal detectors at the main entrance that all students must pass through.

“A gun didn’t pass through a metal detector,” Stubblefield said. “We reviewed it. We put some (protocols) in place. Hopefully it will never happen again. But if you think about where there were guns at any school across the country, there are protocols in place. And you learn the pinch points. … You think you have the things in place, and then if somebody is trying to get something in, they may figure it out. Something was breached. We corrected it and learned from it.”

On Sept. 12, a former student and others drove around Wyandotte High School and threatened two students during dismissal, brandishing more than one firearm, the district reported. On Sept. 20, during a soccer game, a student was arrested for possessing fentanyl and a loaded gun with an extended magazine.

On Nov. 4, a student tried to enter the school with a box of bullets in his backpack. On Nov. 8, a student was arrested in school for possessing 15 fentanyl pills. On Dec. 2, a student was found in possession of a loaded gun and four spent shell casings inside his car in the teachers parking lot.

Other incidents involved drugs found on campus, including a student being sent to the hospital on Nov. 14 for a possible overdose.

The Kansas City, Kansas, school board this fall agreed to start stocking Narcan, a medicine for treating opioid overdoses, as the metro area has seen a rise in fentanyl-related overdoses and deaths. The board approved a policy allowing staff to use Narcan in case of an overdose.

The move comes as more Kansas City area districts stock Narcan, the brand name of naloxone, in response to an explosion of overdoses across the country, particularly noticeable among ages 15 to 24 in the Kansas City area.

Stubblefield said the district spends $4.7 million a year on security, and is continually reviewing protocols to ensure students are safe. Wyandotte is the largest high school in the district with roughly 1,800 students.