North Little Rock school district introduces new safety measures

North Little Rock, Arkansas – In order to immediately enhance safety for the new school year, North Little Rock schools are reorganizing their safety measures.

“In order for our students to feel academically safe, they have to feel physically safe,” said North Little Rock Principal, Nadia Saint-Louis.

To make schools safer, North Little Rock School District is bringing new technology.

“Safety and security is our number one priority,” said Superintendent for North Little Rock Schools, Gregory Pilewski.

The schools will have updated camera equipment and advanced technology to notify students and staff of threats.

“Suppose we did have an unfortunate active shooter or some type of incident on campus, once we have a description, we can put that into our camera system and we can easily determine where that person came from, where they are, you know where they possibly may be headed,” said Director of Security for North Little Rock Schools, Hayward Finas.

The schools will also have armed security guards and weapons detectors at schools and sporting events. “If anyone does come through, and it goes off, we will have security here if we have to scan, but as you can see the majority of the people that came through, we had no problems them coming in, they didn’t have to take keys or anything out of their pockets,” stated Finas.

They will have 11 armed security guards, located at nine elementary schools, and twenty-seven unarmed security officers in partnership with armed school resource officers at all other locations.

According to Pilewski, they will be doing lots of promotional and training videos to help ensure parents are not un-easy sending their kids back to school. “I want our families to know that we take you know this massive responsibility seriously and we’re doing something about it, and showing them, to give our parents a sense of comfort, that my kids going to be okay when I drop them off in the morning,” Gregory Pilewski.

North Little Rock will also be issuing new security uniforms for improved visibility and enhanced cameras at extracurricular and special events.