Dear Parents and Guardians,

All of our hearts are broken after hearing the news about the senseless shooting of children and adults at a Texas elementary school yesterday.

It’s impossible to make sense of such a horrific event. Our schools are a place of growth, development, and discovery. They should never be a place of disaster.

When something awful happens, it is natural for us to look at our own schools and workplaces with safety in mind. At Longview Schools safety and security is a top priority. 

We have done a tremendous amount of work over the past many years to improve our safety and security preparedness all over the district. As a result of this work, each of our schools practice responding to various emergencies every month.  We work closely with the Longview Police Department and the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s office on security issues on a regular basis and have contracted with a school safety specialist to assist us in our efforts.  To increase security we have installed property access controls at several schools and several more schools will get property access controls installed this summer.  These are a few of the things we are doing to help make our school campuses safer and more secure places in which our children can learn.  Our goal is to provide the safest possible environment for our kids and employees and we will continue working hard to maintain and achieve this.

Attached is a document from the National Association of School Psychologists that provides some helpful tips that may be of value  as you talk about this heart breaking event with your children. 

For today, please join me in sending your thoughts to the families impacted by the awful events in Texas.

 

Sincerely,

Dan Zorn, Superintendent

Longview Public Schools