Thanks to a community-wide effort, the Wright City R-II School District has become safer for all parties involved over the past year.

That’s the message that Dr. Holly Broadway-Yates tendered to the board about safety and security improvements made by the district over the past year.

At the June Board of Education meeting, Broadway-Yates discussed the purpose of the report.

“This is an annual reminder that has to be presented to the board; it’s not one that has to be approved,” Broadway-Yates said. “It is something that in our instant cycle we will have to record the date it was presented to you. We just really want to stay current on the safe schools initiative and on all the work that has already been done. We also want to continue to provide a safe environment for our students and staff.”

While the last three years of data were provided to the board, Broadway-Yates said that only the last two school years' data are really viable.

“If this is something you’re not aware of, this is the Missouri Highway Patrol’s school violence hotline,” Broadway-Yates said. “This is three years of data, but we did not really push this out to our people until last year. There was a push last year, teaching our students about it, teaching our people about it.”

“We added it to our website,” Superintendent Dr. Amy Salvo added.

According to the data, the number of reports received by the hotline dropped to 10, down from 12 the year before.

While the number was down from the previous year, categories that received calls that hadn’t the year before included the distribution of inappropriate photos, child abuse or neglect, self-harm, verbal assault, and physical assault.

“Under the distribution of inappropriate photos, which was a duplicate,” Broadway-Yates said. “That was reported multiple times.”

The report also chronicled the district’s 14 fire and lockdown drills, 12 tornado drills and six earthquake drills.

“We still utilize the Raptor system, that’s not new,” Broadway-Yates said. “That’s where all these drills are kept – the timing it takes to complete the drills – everything.”

Broadway-Yates next divulged the 16 actions taken at each of the district’s buildings since the last safety plan. She said that Matt Abernathy, who has since retired, worked with district personnel for the upgrades.

Amongst the highlights of the actions included: purchasing a new database to provide the district with a unified platform, improved parent pick-up and traffic flow, as well as exterior entryway lighting at East Elementary, repairing poor-functioning exterior doors at West Elementary and the middle school, upgrading Interior classroom door locks at the middle school to meet Senate Bill 68 standards, installing a concrete sidewalk at the south entrance to high school football stadium and a communication repeater to strengthen walkie-talkie signal across entire high school campus and installing concrete sidewalks and pads around the high school track throwing event areas.

The district has also hired a new safety coordinator.

“I want to highlight several of them,” Broadway-Yates said. “Matt was conducting safety walkthroughs with building principals throughout the year. A lot of these actions took place stemming from those walkthroughs.”

Broadway-Yates then closed the presentation by outlining the district’s next steps in its safety plan: conducting full site assessments, updating the district’s emergency operations plan, and continuing threat assessments through Courage to Report and anti-bullying education.