RICHARDSON, Texas — Among the administrators from the 100+ districts that make up the Region 10 Education Service Center, there are some who are lucky enough never to have experienced a major safety issue on their campuses.
Then, there are others like Pioneer Technology & Arts Academy Principal Patrice Whitten who, unfortunately, have.
“I just really experienced a gun incident on my campus on February the 19th of this school year,” Whitten said.
On that day, body camera video captures her calming a student down with a gun, ultimately – preventing a tragedy.
“So me coming here today was a moment for me in a way of kind of of self-healing in another way of just learning more,” Whitten said.
Throughout the day Wednesday, she joined about 300 other administrators for the region’s Safety 1st Conference. They listened in on panels, workshops and discussions on subjects like mental health, sex trafficking, campus accessibility, drugs and, of course, guns.
In the midst, many approach her for advice.
“We’re taught policy," she said. "We're taught to practice, to practice the drills, to execute the drills and so on the day of, it's just sharing with them my heart. Just getting them to understand that I did for them what I want to want to do for my kids."
“This has been an event that's been in the planning now for about 3 months,” said Craig Miller, who helped coordinate the summit.
Miller says his goal is to help district leaders navigate the challenges, like putting armed offices on every campus.
“It's easy for the state to put mandates on districts that you need to do certain things like have security at every school campus in the state. But when you're a large school district like Dallas ISD and you've got more than 135 elementary school campuses than you didn't previously have law enforcement or security on those campuses. How?” he asked. “How do you fund those positions? And so I think that everyone's working as smart and diligently as they can.”
And he hopes by bringing together so many brilliant minds, together they can find more solutions.