[EdTalks] School Safety in Greenville County Schools: Layers of Security

As parents and community members, we all want the same thing: schools where our children can learn, grow, and feel safe. But what does it actually take to secure a large school district? In this episode, we get a rare, in-depth look at the comprehensive strategy for school safety in Greenville County Schools. Many security systems are designed never to fail, but the best are designed with the assumption that one layer might. This "layers of security" approach is what keeps students and staff safe every day.

We're joined by Greg Porter, the Director of Security, School safety, and Emergency Preparedness for Greenville County Schools, who pulls back the curtain on the district's complex safety and security operations. Greg explains the foundational pillars of emergency management for schools: Prepare, Prevent, Mitigate, Respond, and Recover. We dive deep into the concept of creating layers of school security, from architectural design and building hardening in new schools to retrofitting existing ones. Greg discusses the crucial importance of active shooter training for school staff, which goes far beyond watching a video. This training includes practicing "Run, Hide, Fight" (or "Avoid, Deny, Defend") principles and conducting regular drills, which are observed by third-party law enforcement to ensure effectiveness. The district even performs intrusion testing with plainclothes officers to test and reinforce protocols, changing the culture to one of constant awareness. We also explore the rationale behind using randomized weapons detection systems in schools, a strategy designed to be a constant deterrent without creating a prison-like environment. Greg addresses how the district is constantly evaluating its protocols by debriefing incidents that happen across the country, ensuring the approach to school safety in Greenville County Schools is always evolving. It’s a delicate balance between implementing new technologies like cameras and vape sensors and focusing on the human element—the daily grind of training staff to prevent, deter, and respond to any situation.

About Our Guest:

Greg Porter is the Director of Security, School Safety, and Emergency Preparedness for Greenville County Schools. His path to this critical role is unique, beginning with his service in the Marine Corps, including a deployment to Iraq. He then spent nearly 14 years with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, where he served as a School Resource Officer (SRO) at Woodmont High School, a juvenile gang investigator, and a supervisor of SROs before transitioning to his current leadership position with the school district.

Episode Resources:

• Learn more about GCS safety and security

Introduction

Erin Rigot: As parents and educators, we all want the same thing: schools where our kids can learn, grow, and feel safe. Today on Simple Civics Ed Talks, we're pulling back the curtain on the measures that keep our schools secure.

Mary Leslie Anderson: Greg Porter, Director of Security, School Safety, and Emergency Preparedness for Greenville County Schools, walks us through the training, protocols, and planning that protects students every day. Let's get a look inside this vital work.

Erin Rigot: Greg, thank you so much for being with us here today to talk about safety in schools. This is a huge topic in our district, but also all over the country, all over the news, all the time. We are excited to have you with us today to help clarify and explain what we do in Greenville County Schools to keep kids safe today. So thank you so much for being with us.

Greg Porter: Thank you for having me.

Erin Rigot: If you'll start by just telling us a little bit how you got to this position.

From Marine Corps to SRO: The Path to Director of School Safety

Greg Porter: I'm originally not a native here in Greenville. I've been here about 20 years. I grew up outside Chicago, went to Ball State University, joined the Marine Corps during college, deployed to Iraq, got injured in Iraq, and then moved to South Carolina where my wife is also a teacher here.

I joined the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, where I did almost 14 years at the Sheriff's Office, working the road, and then moved to SRO at Woodmont High School. I absolutely loved being an SRO. I rose the ranks from there, promoted a master deputy to a juvenile gang investigator, and then supervisor of SROs.

Just over three years ago, I switched to the school district and left law enforcement to be the coordinator of emergency management. Then at the beginning of last school year was promoted to director of school safety, security, and emergency management.

Mary Leslie Anderson: So if you want to just start by summarizing a little bit about what school security really means, what school safety really means to you and to our listeners? What our listeners need to know about school safety and security?

The Pillars of Emergency Management and Layers of School Security

Greg Porter: School safety, if you're listening or have seen anything nationally or from the government, you usually think of FEMA emergency management, and there are pillars of emergency management: Prepare, prevent, mitigate, respond, recover. Those are your huge pillars of it. You think of layers of security because you can have the best laid plans and they're always going to fail or have a failure point in some way. So if you layer your security and safety in different aspects, you might fail on one, but another layer is going to catch it.

In the realm of school security, it is incredibly vast. It's crazy. The meetings that I go to from facilities and construction of new schools, and we're talking about architecture and how to design schools and how to do locks and doors. You're talking about physical security and then how to enhance existing structures for building hardening.

But then also in the realm of technology, cameras, software, emergency alert systems, halo sensors in schools for vaping. Because we're not just the egregious school safety of school shooters. We're all things school safety. It's fire safety and inspections and it's managing the physical security, technology security, and then also operational. It's your standard operating procedures of how your staff is going to react when this happens and training and things like that. It's a huge realm.

Mary Leslie Anderson: I think we could start by talking about staff training. I think that's maybe something that the public is not as aware of as how to get in a school building, locks on doors, and volunteer management, but how are our staff trained?

Active Shooter Training and Intrusion Testing for School Staff

Greg Porter: So the base level is everyone has to watch an active shooter training video and what are the core principles of that is run, hide, fight, avoid, deny, defend. You have different response options for different scenarios and we try to teach everyone that across the board. You can have a video, but how are you practicing that? Because that's how you're going to learn.

Not only does the state mandate, and by law, you must conduct different drills throughout the building all year long. You have a fire drill every month. We institute standards above what the state says, especially for lockdowns or active shooter scenarios. We go above and beyond with law enforcement and bringing in the third-party observer of our lockdown drills so that it's not just us saying, "Hey, you need to fix this because I'm the principal and you're the teacher and I saw this."

But now it's also law enforcement saying, "Hey, this is what we observed and this is wrong or this is awesome," of how you guys exercise that. But then we also do intrusion testing where we put out a plainclothes deputy or officer to try and get into the building. It's not to try and get people in trouble, but it's legitimately trying to change the culture of the school to say, "Hey, you need to be aware of this. We cannot leave doors propped open," and we've moved way beyond that from maybe 10 years ago of propping doors.

Erin Rigot: We've seen it evolve over the years in terms of the safety videos we watch and the drills we run. But how would you explain to the public listening how safety has evolved in schools over the last, let's say, 10 years?

How School Safety Protocols Have Evolved Since Columbine

Greg Porter: Well, if you go just a little bit further back, safety has changed dramatically, especially in the law enforcement realm with Columbine. That's pretty much what changed, extravagantly, the law enforcement response and how you train in schools. As far as changes just in the past 10 years, I would say Columbine is still the biggest one for law enforcement.

We as Greenville County School District, we are constantly evaluating every incident that happens throughout the country and digesting what happened, how it happened, and what are we doing to prevent that specific scenario. Because every single one is different and how security or safety failed in those environments. You can look at any school shooting across the country and evaluate that and see, "Okay, well, that couldn't have happened here because we do this," or, "Hey, we need to step this up in this area because that's also a failure on our point."

And that's something that Dr. W. Burke Royster, we meet at the highest levels of a debrief of active shooter events when they occur elsewhere, just to debrief our own staff and say, "Hey, what are we doing that will help this or deter or prevent this? Or what can we do to change?"

Erin Rigot: What would you say are the things that we have in place right now today? If I'm sending my student to elementary school, middle school, high school, that makes you feel good that they are safe at school? What do we have in place to let parents know that safety really is our number one priority? We say it all the time, and we feel it when we work for the school district, but to let those that aren't in a building every day know that their student is safe at school.

The Role of Randomized Weapons Detection Systems in Schools

Greg Porter: I think parents, especially here in the community, the most visible one is our weapons detection system, and it's on a random basis, so we also get the most questions on why we do it that way. If it was a 100% foolproof system that would completely eradicate weapons in schools, I don't think anyone would spare any expense to put them everywhere. But ask the TSA, ask any prison, weapons still get by.

You still have to be judicious with cost, but also when you permanently put a system in place and then who's running that machine, the human element of complacency comes in and also kids are kids and they're going to find a way around it. When you think about deploying permanently at a school system, it would turn into a prison-type environment because if you go out to recess, you're not just coming back into the gym. You have to come back through Evolv because once you exit the building, you have to. Then you're having choke points to get back into the building too. So then your cost rises because of how many entrances you have at the school and how many more staff do you have to operate at all of those points?

Those are the higher-level questions, but I would say our weapons detection system and how we deploy it in a random way always keeps people on their toes because they don't know where we're going to be at any given point. We're there every single week, no matter what, but you'd never know when we're coming. So it does provide the element of randomness. And even if kids are saying there's a weapon in a car, that deterrent is there. It's a win if they try to keep it away from the school because they don't know when we're coming. It's still a win.

Erin Rigot: I can vouch for that. Y'all surprised us with it this morning. They really don't tell us. It's a surprise.

Mary Leslie Anderson: Greg, if you could tell the public anything about school safety and security that would convince them that coming to school is safer than going other places publicly, what would you say?

Balancing New Technology with Proven Safety Protocols

Greg Porter: The data is there. School is still the safest place for kids as compared to being in the community, when you're thinking of all kinds of crime or other ways that you can get hurt. But I would say ultimately there are 45 people in the security and safety department that are working all hours of the day around the clock to ensure that multiple different systems, operations, and trainings are all moving forward on any given day, whether it's from how a door locks to physical hardware to ensuring cameras are there.

It's a constant balance for us, just like I said with the weapons detection. If there was a system out there that was the silver bullet to solve school safety, everyone would have it. And technology is coming out that they claim to be the next and best greatest thing, but it's insanely expensive. So it's testing, and we're doing testing and evaluations of all kinds of technologies that are out there to ensure that if we want to pursue something, it's worth it.

It's balancing the newer technologies that are coming out that will help keep us safe, but also, the daily grind is what your teachers and staff are going to do and training them to not only prevent, deter, and respond appropriately.

Mary Leslie Anderson: Thank you so much for what you do for us every day and your team. I believe that safest I am is at school if I'm not home, so I'm proud to be here with you.

Erin Rigot: I think we also can hear in your responses that we are able to create that welcoming environment for students because we feel safe at school. You guys would know it if the teachers did not feel safe at school and so I constantly hear from parents and community members of being so surprised when they come into our buildings and how welcoming it feels and how loved the kids are. We can only do that because of the safety and all the things that you mentioned that are in place. So thank you and your team for helping us create the welcoming environments for students every day.

Thank you for joining us for today's conversation. We're Mary Leslie Anderson and Erin Rigot with Rooted Consulting. Until next time, keep nurturing school culture. And keep growing strong roots in your community.