Parents, community invited to school safety forum in Dawson County

After dealing with at least two school threats that led to student arrests recently, officials with the Dawson County School System want to sit down with parents to discuss school safety.

 

Dr. Damon Gibbs, the superintendent of the school system, said a March 8 forum will be open to the community, but he especially wants to hear from parents.

 

"I think it's critical at this point to have an opportunity for us to get together and have a conversation," Gibbs said in an interview with AccessWDUN. 

 

He said the Thursday night forum at the Dawson County Junior High School auditorium will be composed of two segments.

 

"The first part will be an informational session that I'll present along with some of our emergency personnel...just giving our parents some information about some of the things that we've done in the past few years concerning student safety," Gibbs said.

 

After that, participants will break into groups by school.

 

"We'll have school leaders lead those meetings," Gibbs said. "We're doing it by school [because] each school handles safety a little bit differently because their buildings are laid out a little bit differently."

 

Gibbs said the "by school" meetings will give parents an opportunity to share safety ideas with school leaders. 

 

"Nothing's off the table. We are very open to the conversation. We just need to get some input from them," Gibbs said. "Also, our sheriff's department is going to be well-represented and part of the conversation, as well."

 

Gibbs said the main goal of the meeting is to make the system more proactive when it comes to safety, rather than reactive.

 

"We have active shooter drills that we conduct, we have lockdown procedures that we practice with our kids... but we want to be more proactive. We want to know things that we can do on the proactive end that will prevent the types of things that we're seeing in other communities," Gibbs said.

 

Dozens of school systems across the country - and that includes many in North Georgia - have experienced school threats in the weeks following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The Dawson County School System has handled two threats that resulted in student arrests. The first occurred on Thursday, Feb. 22 at Dawson County High School; the second resulted in the arrest of a Dawson County Junior High School student on Feb. 28. 

 

There are seven schools in the Dawson County School System - one high school, a junior high, a middle school and four elementary schools.