Fentress Faculty Attend Student Safety Summit

Faculty from the Fentress County Schools just back from the Southeast Student Safety Summit in Bowling Green.

Fentress County Schools Safety and Security Director Bill Anzenberger said leaders shared information to better prepare staff to recognize behaviors that could threaten student and teacher safety. He said they heard first-hand experiences from a Minnesota teacher who lost several students to a school shooting and Frank Deangelis, who was Columbine High School’s principal during the 1999 shooting.

“It’s mostly awareness that was one of the areas that was being stressed,” Anzenberger said. “That the faculty and the SROs and even folks at the district level, as well as myself, just be alert of these things.”

Anzenberger said attendees also learned about products like TCH vapes and other legally attained over-the-counter substances that students are abusing in schools. He said behaviors linked to these substances can be hard to identify, but school staff can prevent the dangers they pose by getting educated.

“These substances that they’re taking and abusing causing various inabilities for them to concentrate or behave in a manner that’s disruptive to the schools,” Anzenberger said. “So yes, it’s always good information to hear and even if it’s information you were aware of, it’s always good to see or listen to what impact it’s having in other jurisdictions throughout the country or within the region.”

He said the summit brought to light some of the successes of the Fentress County School District’s staff in creating safe learning environments. He said the system began conducting behavioral threat assessments earlier this year to determine whether or not behavioral incidents pose a threat to students or teachers.

“We are going to continue to improve upon our ability to work through these assessments and do our best to ensure that these incidents or these threats are kept from creating more safety issues within the schools,” Anzenberger said.

He said he learned a great deal about not only what these safety risks look like, but the long-term effects a tragedy has on students, teachers, and an entire community when they are not inhibited.