Utica schools counting on concealed weapons detection system to keep schools gun free

No guns have ever been found inside the Utica schools, Superintendent Bruce Karam said.

And Karam and the school board want to keep it that way.

On March 22, the school board voted unanimously, without discussion, to purchase a concealed weapons detection system for all 13 schools in the district.

“I have always considered school safety to be a number one priority,” Karam said, “and I strongly believe that it is critical to have this new equipment in place for the safety and well-being of our students, teachers and staff.”

The new system quickly will scan everyone entering the schools for weapons without leading to lines and students getting to class late, as has happened with traditional metal detectors in schools, Karam said.

The system, sold by upstate firm Day Automation, will cost an estimated $3.7 million, with 90 percent of the cost paid through state aid and about $370,000 paid by the district, he said.

The new system will put the Utica schools in a minority nationwide. Only 7.1 percent of public schools used metal detectors (and only 2.2 percent used them daily) in the 2017-2018 school year, according to the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics. No detection technology other than metal detectors was listed in the data.

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Although the district hasn’t had any incidents with guns, other weapons have been found in the schools over the past few years, including one found at Sen. James H. Donovan Middle School during the 2020-21 school year, according to state data self-reported by school districts.

There were seven weapons found during the 2019-20 school year (one at Thomas R. Proctor High School, one at Hugh R. Jones Elementary School and five at Donovan) and 11 weapons during the 2018-19 school year (eight at Proctor and three at Donovan).

Karam said he didn’t want to reveal too many details about the new detection system or how the district will use it because he doesn’t want anyone to figure out how to circumvent it. But he did say that multiple units will be installed in each building. The system is similar to ones installed in arenas and other venues at which people are scanned as they enter, without having to pause, Karam said.

The equipment will be installed over the next couple months, he said.

Systems that screen for weapons can help to “detect, deter or deny violent actors,” according to the final report of the Federal Commission on School Safety released in December 2018. But the report also noted that such systems are generally labor-intensive, time consuming and expensive.

“The impact of metal detectors, X-ray machines and similar screening technologies on school violence is questionable,” it concluded, “with at least one study concluding that metal detectors have no apparent effect on reducing violence on school grounds.”

But the report focused on systems requiring one-at-a-time entry, which Karam said Utica’s system will not.

The report, which was put out by the Trump administration, also now carries a disclaimer saying that it is currently under review and all of its contents may not reflect the current views of the federal departments of education, homeland security, justice and health and human services.

Large schools with 1,000 or more students, city schools, districts with a majority of minority students and schools in low-income areas — in other words, schools like Utica’s — are the ones most likely to use metal detectors, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Among public high schools, 20.5 percent nationwide had some form of metal detector in 2017-18, but only 1.5 percent of elementary schools did, meaning Utica’s elementary schools will be even more of a novelty than its high school.

More common strategies for securing schools included, as of 2017-2018, controlling access to school buildings (95.4 percent of schools); controlling access to school grounds (50.8 percent); requiring visitors to wear a badge or sign in (94.6 percent); random sweeps for contraband (27.4 percent); security cameras inside schools (83.5 percent); student ID badges (9.2 percent); and staff ID badges (69.9 percent).

Except for requiring visitors to sign in (which has been nearly universal for years), all those strategies have become significantly more common over the past 20 years.

Amy Roth covers issues that affect families for the Observer-Dispatch. Email Amy Roth at aroth@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Utica schools getting concealed weapons detection system