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Taking another look at school safety in Duval

After a gunman opened fire on police from inside an elementary school in Atlanta on Tuesday it’s got plenty of people thinking once again about school safety here in Duval county even though school security was recently reviewed and increased…

Superintendent Dr. Nikolai Vitti says his first few days on the job were around the time of the Newtown shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary and shortly after they began going over security protocol to see where and how procedures could be improved. Vitti says it's a matter of being constantly vigilant, because as we all saw on Tuesday, there are still ways for people to get inside without staff knowing even with security measures like locks and cameras in place.

"It's making sure that our security procedures were understood by everyone at the school level from teachers to paraprofessionals to principals," says Dr. Vitti. "We put iin a lot of new systems last year to make sure that we're on the same page with prevention."

Vitti says the realities of society are changing and schools have to change with them.

"I would say the level of safety and prevention is based on the structure of the school."

He says that many schools in Duval county were built 50 years ago, many with open campuses, but because of change in society, access has to be more restricted than it was.

"But a lot of this is about training, awareness, and having the systems in place to be preventive if something like that were to happen.

He says those schools that were built in such a way that makes them more vulnerable to threats may need more security and prevention than other, newer schools.

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