Safety of students, staff No. 1 priority in Oak Ridge Schools, superintendent says

Safety, security and space that will be needed in three years to accommodate a growing student population – those were some of the topics presented recently to the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge by Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Bruce Borchers.

The LWVOR attendees were given a handout that states: “The safety and well-being of our students and staff will always be the number one priority of Oak Ridge Schools.”

Borchers said that each of seven Oak Ridge school buildings has an armed school resource officer and that the schools are required by the state to hold 23 drills throughout the year for students and staff, including 12 fire drills and an armed intruder drill with local law enforcement.

But when asked about the controversial bill Tennessee lawmakers passed in the state Senate that would allow some properly trained teachers to carry handguns in classrooms, Borchers said, “That’s not going to happen in Oak Ridge Schools. The liability alone would be a big issue.”

Ways schools are dealing with rise in mental health issues

Because of a rise in mental health issues and suicidal ideation among American youth, Borchers said the schools “have a social-emotional learning curriculum.” He added that students are given a Social Emotional Learning Assessment survey that helps school counselors “identify students who are in distress,” including students who are doing well academically and participating in extracurricular activities yet are “behind the scenes hurt.”

He noted the schools have a new student success coordinator who works with counselors and teachers to make sure every student has a connection with a trustworthy, helpful adult.

Technology helps keeps students, staff safer

Using grants from the state of Tennessee, Oak Ridge Schools has spent $2.5 million over the past 10 years on initiatives to enhance safety in the city schools, he added.

Concerning the importance of state funding, Borchers said in response to a question that he is opposed to the governor’s bill proposing a statewide school voucher program to give parents choices in what school their child attends; parents would receive funds to help cover the cost of their selected private school. “Any time you take money away from public schools, it’s a threat to public education,” he said. Since the league meeting, the governor has said the bill is dead for this legislative session.

Concerning security in the schools, Borchers said all schools are secured with badge access and that classrooms are locked when students are present. He added that every building is equipped with cameras, noting that 462 cameras have been installed across the school district.

Borchers said the school system uses Gaggle, a company that monitors students’ use of school-provided digital accounts such as social media, email and websites. He added that the service lets building administrators know when students have typed in certain words of concern such as “gun, suicide and death.” Gaggle uses an algorithm that flags references to sex, drugs and violence.

Borchers spoke enthusiastically about new Raptor Technologies software that is expected to increase school security in Oak Ridge Schools and make a deadly school shooting less likely.

“This integrated school software will help us prevent, prepare for, respond to and then recover from an armed intrusion or other incident,” he said.

A phone app will allow staff to initiate lockdowns, trigger fire alarms and notify staff and emergency response personnel immediately about any potentially dangerous incidents, including weather emergencies.

Some 1,500 Oak Ridge Schools staff members will each soon have a “live” lanyard with a panic button that is to be pressed only if a school lockdown should be initiated and if staff and emergency response personnel should be quickly notified about the presence and location of a potential or actual armed intruder or other emergency.

New school by 2027 proposed, other changes

Noting that more than 2,000 new housing units are projected to be built by 2030 in Oak Ridge - including as many as 640 housing units at The Preserve at Clinch River on the city's west end, Borchers reiterated the points he made in February during a joint work session of the Oak Ridge Board of Education and City Council. He recommended that a new elementary school that accommodates 800 students be built by 2027 on the west end, that Linden Elementary School (which was named a National Blue Ribbon School last year) be closed eventually and that additions and renovations be made to three other elementary schools and the two middle schools so they can accommodate more students.

A modernized Woodland Elementary School would accommodate 800 students, and Willow Brook and Glenwood schools would each have a capacity for 600 students. The four-school plan is to have 800- and 600-student elementary schools on one side of the school district and 800- and 600-student schools on the other side.

The recommendation by Borchers and the school board also includes returning the fifth grade to the elementary schools and making Robertsville and Jefferson middle schools into junior highs again, holding sixth- through eighth-grade classes.

As reported earlier in The Oak Ridger, the potential cost of the recommended building program is $69.5 million, which does not include buying land for a new school on the west end where Oak Ridge’s population growth is projected to continue.

Borchers said his staff and the school board are working with RSP & Associates, a company that has provided services nationwide forecasting future student enrollment over five to 10 years in any given school district.

“We want to verify with an outside entity that more students are coming,” he said.

He noted that student enrollment in Oak Ridge Schools had risen from 4,873 in the 2022-23 school year to 5,064 currently.

Improving communications

Remarking that “you can’t communicate enough,” Borchers said that the school system is improving its external and internal communications as a result of hiring the full-time communications specialist Molly Gallagher Smith.

She will be launching a new website and app that will better communicate information to parents. “The new communication platform for parents is called ParentSquare,” he said.

A behind-the-scenes intranet for all school system employees will also be launched.

“We want to make sure our own teachers and other staff better know what is going on in our school district,” he said.

Getting, keeping teachers

Asked about teacher recruitment and retention, Borchers revealed that after the COVID-19 years of 2020 and 2021, “we saw a higher percentage of teachers retire early.” But because the Oak Ridge school district pays teachers more than other districts in the region, he said, “We have been able to attract some of the best teachers from other districts and retain them.

“Now, it’s getting harder. We used to have four or five people to pick from for each subject, but now we’re getting down to one or two. But we aren’t facing the same problem as other schools.”

Learning loss and flight school

Borchers stated that Oak Ridge students suffered less learning loss because of the COVID-19 lockdown than did students in many other school districts. On the topic of academic achievement, he presented percentages on improvements in proficiency and test scores at Oak Ridge Schools in reading, English language arts, math and science. He credited teachers with doing an “amazing” job in “adjusting to the third-grade reading retention goal and taking the steps needed to set our students up for success.”

On average, 81% of Oak Ridge students perform at or above widely held expectations in the social, emotional, cognitive, literacy and math domains, Borchers said. In answer to a question, he stated that 94% of the Oak Ridge High School seniors graduated last year.

Borchers expressed pride in the Wildcat Manufacturing laboratory for middle-school students (which has flight simulators, drones, robots and 3D printers), the newly redesigned state-of-the-art welding lab, an educational program for future nurses and a new partnership with the University of Tennessee that will likely make Oak Ridge Schools the center for instructing teachers from other school districts in the region on how to use artificial intelligence in their classrooms.

He is also proud of a newly created aviation program that will enable motivated Oak Ridge students to earn a private pilot’s license upon graduation. He noted that “a 15-year-old boy in the aviation program flew over the high school before he could legally drive himself there.”

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Borchers: Safety of Oak Ridge students, staff is the No. 1 priority