BILLINGS — Ben Steele Middle School is hosting the Jeremy Bullock Safe Schools Summit through Wednesday.
The summit provides different workshops for educators and school staff to learn more about school safety.
Topics included mental health, suicide prevention and security architecture.
Watch educators talk about school safety:
“The climate has changed across the board nationwide,” Billings Public Schools Safety and Emergency Management Coordinator Joe Halligan said Tuesday.
The summit provided critical conversations about how to create safer learning environment.
Atticus Pate-Terry, an incoming freshman at Helena High School, offered insights based on his experiences.
“There's times where there's people who don't feel very safe. But usually, as long as you have someone to talk to, it's able to be handled,” Pate-Terry said.
School Resource Officer at Big Sky High School, Christian Cameron, explained the importance of building relationships between school authorities and students.
“You get to not only be on scene if there is violence that's initiated and be able to address that, but also developing relationships with youth,” Cameron said.
Cameron stressed the need for school officials to be prepared for potential safety threats.
“Number one would be to mitigate a threat's potential to access innocent victims, students, staff, faculty, that kind of thing,” Cameron said.
Halligan is committed to ensuring educators and staff receive proper training in emergency response.
“Getting our teachers and staff to adopt the mentality of being in that first responder role, like their job is to not only educate, but to keep our kids safe,” Halligan said.
As part of proactive measures, Billings Public Schools are investing in both personal and technological safety measures.
“We have teams in every single school in the district who are willing to and able to respond in medical emergencies,” Halligan said.
Halligan said they will be installing 1,200 night locks on classroom doors.
“Those are going to be going on all of our classroom doors just as an added layer of protection in our classrooms during a lock down,” Halligan said.
