East Lansing High School students, teachers support safety plans to address school violence

EAST LANSING – Tobias Vanderbush said he would rather be putting all of his focus into passing his classes at East Lansing High School, but like many students, he finds himself focusing more on avoiding the violence that has plagued the school.

“Everybody feels like they’re kind of walking on thin ice,” said Vanderbush, a junior. “You don’t know if you’re going to bump into the wrong person having a bad day. It gives you a lot of anxiety. Kids could be fighting and you get caught in the middle of it.”

Vanderbush has a sister who found herself caught in the middle of one of those fights during the 2021-22 school year. After the fight, she was forced to change clothes because bodily fluids splashed on her, Vanderbush said.

Violence at East Lansing High School has compelled hundreds of students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents and community members to raise concerns in recent weeks at packed Board of Education meetings and a listening session hosted by East Lansing Mayor Ron Bacon.

Superintendent Dori Leyko and Assistant Superintendent Glenn Mitcham have proposed a plan that includes immediate and proposed safety enhancements, from limiting entrances to the high school to two doors and hiring security officers, to possible cellphone and backpack bans and installing metal detectors.

Vanderbush and other students, teachers, staff and community members have called the plan a good first step toward addressing the violence in the school district.

The district doesn’t yet have exact cost estimates for any of the measures. On Friday, Leyko said the district learned it will be receiving a state safety grant of approximately $436,600 that can help pay for some costs.

Some of the major changes include hiring security guards to monitor hallways and bathrooms, limiting student entry to two doors before school starts and just the main door during school hours, adding alarms to exterior doors, and planning active shooter training for staff.

Families have also been calling on administrators to improve its communication with families when schools enter lockdown and shelter-in-place or face other threats. In response, the district is working to improve communication and is considering a mobile safety alert system that would allow the district to send mass text messages.

The school district also plans to survey students, staff and families on proposed safety enhancements that could prove to be controversial. Those include bans on cellphones and backpacks in classrooms and bringing school resource officers back inside the school. Resource officers were removed nearly eight years ago.

Restricting use of cellphones and backpacks would likely be a controversial decision among the student body, Vanderbush said. Addressing door security is crucial.

“Kids are opening doors for other people,” Vanderbush said. “You don’t know who’s being brought into the school.”

Some parents believe that the recent violence and misconduct by students stem from a variety of issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the year of learning remotely that took a year of socialization away for some students, the recent protests and push for racial justice, and the death of family members from COVID-19.

"This is not an issue of broken policy or broken rules," said Sue Wheeler, a mother of two East Lansing High School students and the director of health at Lansing School District. "This is systemic. Our students, especially our adolescents, are struggling in East Lansing and across the country."

Mark Pontoni, an East Lansing Educational Association representative and social studies teacher at the high school, is a proponent of a cellphone ban. A cellphone ban was included in a list of demands he made on behalf of the teacher’s union at a Jan. 23 Board of Education meeting. Demands also included limiting entry points to the high school, banning backpacks in classrooms and expelling students who bring firearms to school.

As students and staff consider the solutions to the violence concerns, Pontoni said they will have to consider how much freedom they will be willing to trade for more security.

“There will be things that won’t make some people happy,” Pontoni said. “How much do we want to limit the liberties students have at school, whether it’s cellphones or backpacks or going out to lunch? Things that have been part of the East Lansing culture for a long time. What are we willing to give up?”

He credited school officials, students and the community for coming together to address this issue.

Former East Lansing High School Principal Andrew Wells retired at the end of the 2021-22 school year, but he has been following the recent concerns from afar. Wells became principal in 2017.

“East Lansing High School is a great school. It’s a great community,” he said. “We have great staff, students and support. I’m very confident East Lansing High School will rise above what is happening.”

There are hundreds of students, teachers and families who hope that Wells is right and the violence will cease.

“It affects the way I learn,” Vanderbush said. “Either you’re distracted by the things that are happening … or there’s the threat (of violence). Should we be worried?”

Here are immediate and proposed changes outlined by the district:

Immediate changes include:

• Limiting student entry to two doors before school starts and just the main door during school hours, according to Leyko
• Increasing supervision of hallways and bathrooms
• Restricting hall passes during the first and last 10 minutes of every class period
• Eliminating hall passes during what the district calls Excel, which is similar to a study hall period for students
• Making the district wellness leader available to staff and students for engagement, consultation and resources for mental health
• Reminding students to immediately report unsafe situations or concerns to the main office rather than on social media
• Assigning additional security and/or supervision at athletic events

The plan also includes short-term safety enhancements to be completed in the coming weeks or before the end of the school year:

• Contracting with a security company to bring security officers back to the school to monitor hallways, bathrooms and exterior doors
• Reinstating an in-school suspension program that provides discipline, rehabilitation and support for suspended students while keeping them in school
• Adding alarms to exterior doors. According to Leyko, there are 86 exterior doors, with about 17 of them alarmed to prohibit use, and 71 doors have door prop notifications that alert administrators when the door is open for 30 seconds or more
• Adding more lockdown buttons near office secretary desks
• Improving emergency communications with families, including a potential mobile safety alert system that would allow the district to send mass text messages

Safety enhancements being considered include:

• Working with East Lansing Police Department to plan active shooter training for staff
• Restricting cellphone use
• Banning backpacks from some areas
• Requiring students and staff to wear IDs
• Hiring a school resource officer
• Installing metal detectors
• Considering a bond proposal to fund safety enhancements and the construction of a new entrance at East Lansing High School

Contact Mark Johnson at majohnson2@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.