by Bridget Cook ’14

MCPS has never been considered a dangerous school system. Staff and students do not come to school each day feeling tense, concerned or at risk. County schools, like Sherwood, are calm, safe environments where students can learn without fear of significant emergencies.

The county upholds a constant standard of excellence in safety that people generally take for granted, unaware of how much is actually going on behind the scenes. Currently, MCPS is in a six-year improvement plan for security, striving to make schools even safer through new technology and highly trained staff.

The goal of the improvement plan, which began in 2009, is to bring new security measures to all county schools. “In the six-year Capital Improvement Program for security initiatives, we replaced the camera systems in high schools, added camera systems in all middle schools, are installing visitor management systems in all schools and installing electronic access control in all elementary schools,” said Robert Hellmuth, MCPS director of security.

These advanced measures allow staff to quickly determine a student’s location, control who enters the building, and cross-reference all visitors with local and state sex offender registries.

Like the technology, school security staff is always evolving. The entire county security staff undergoes training sessions at least twice a year. “[These sessions] involve various topics of concern … [such as] crisis intervention training, shelter in place training, and emergency procedures,” said Patrick Rooney, security team leader at Sherwood.

Several members of the Sherwood security staff have served in the county as police officers and have many years of experience in other MCPS schools, making them excellent assets to the school community.   “Our staffing here [at Sherwood] comes from a variety of backgrounds which are well suited to the school’s population,” said Rooney.

“Our strength has and continues to be the dedicated school security force who are committed to helping provide a safe learning and working environment for students and staff,” added Hellmuth. “Security in our schools has come a long ways … I believe we have an exceptional program.”