Good Evening Families and Hopewell Community Members:
It saddens me beyond words to respond once again to potential threats and violations related to the safety and security of our schools. As you should have heard by now from school messaging around noon today, a gun was found in a coat outside of an exterior door at HHS. It was only because of the bravery and dedication of one of our teachers that a student was denied access to the door as we presume it was his intent to circumvent our existing safety protocols and bring it into the building. As the earlier message to families indicated, we were able to identify, consequence and file charges immediately. We continue to grieve that some of our students are making choices that could impact the health and safety of our children, staff and buildings.
Please rest assured we will continue to learn from these experiences and implement additional layers of prevention strategies to minimize risks to all of our precious students and employees. Effective tomorrow, thanks to our dear partners at the Sheriff's Office, we will have a significant law enforcement presence through the end of the week. Officers will be stationed throughout the building to monitor hall activity and exterior doorways. Earlier today, we began the process of hiring temporary additional school safety officers to add to both secondary schools upon our return to school in January. Our student ID badges are in and we will be implementing this requirement in January as well. These are challenging times, but our resolve and determination to ensure our schools are safe will always be our greatest priority.
I hope you will consider joining us on January 13, 2022 at 5:30pm for a community Town Hall meeting to further discuss the safety of our schools and city. We cannot do this alone and not only welcome your input and assistance, we need it. As always, if you would like to discuss this further, feel free to contact me at the School Board Office.
Melody Hackney
Superintendent of Schools