A Message From The Superintendent, Dr. Melody Hackney
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Good morning, HCPS Family and Friends:
It was almost exactly one year ago this week that the school board and our leadership team
began making sense of three serious discipline incidents involving guns in our schools. As you
may remember, On October 21, November 3 and November 9, 2021, guns were successfully
brought into our secondary schools. And while we will be eternally grateful that no one was
harmed, these incidents forever changed how, moving forward, we planned to better secure
our schools and classrooms.
On November 15, 2021, my team and I held a Town Hall Meeting and made a presentation to
the school board, outlining this plan. We strengthened our existing relationships with our local
and state law enforcement partners, made financial investments in appropriate preventative
technologies, significantly added security staffing in our buildings and after identifying all best
practices in the research around school security, began immediately putting these people,
practices and technologies in place in our secondary school buildings. Some criticized us for
“turning our schools into jails” after initiating check-in systems with metal detectors and
backpack checks. We heard and we understood; however, given all our children, our city, our
state and world were facing as we recovered from the ongoing effects and community
consequences of the pandemic, we made a promise that our schools would be safer from that
point forward.
Yesterday at HHS, our plan was tested and the school board and I are extremely proud of the
results. Today, in reflection only 24 hours later, we celebrate that our diligence and efforts
over the last year were not in vain. Yesterday morning, a high school student went through our
regular check-in process and during the search of the student’s backpack, a loaded handgun
was discovered. The situation was handled discreetly and without incident. Our HHS team and
security staff, in partnership with HCPD and the Sheriff’s Office, did their jobs…following all
appropriate and existing protocols, and today, we rest in the first example of seeing the results
of our hard work. And while we will never stop seeking to understand the “why” behind these
unfortunate incidents, we are thankful for the support over the last year that we were able to
prevent the weapon from getting into the building. The system worked! The gun did not get
into our schools and no one was harmed. And while I know and feel the fear and frustration
around the increased gun violence in our city right now, we must come together when we can
actually see the results of our efforts WORK for the safety of our schools and community.
Today, I thank God for His protection of all students and staff at HCPS. I thank our dedicated
teachers, employees and administrators whose jobs have changed exponentially after Covid-19,
specifically adding safety duties and responsibilities to their workload. I thank Chief Starke,
Sheriff Stanley, Mike Whittington and all of our security personnel who helped develop our plan
and implement it each and every day in all of our seven schools to keep us safe. I thank our
SBO staff who have for the last year added to their duties coming to HHS in the early mornings
to help with the check-in process. I thank our parents and families, who in spite of all going on
in our world post-Covid, continue to trust us every day to keep their precious babies safe. And
finally, I thank our school board for supporting our efforts every step of the way.
Early in December, Chief Starke, Sheriff Stanley and I hope to host a formal community
engagement summit to bring together people from Hopewell to begin expanded conversations
around making our neighborhoods, businesses and schools safer given the increase in
community crime in our special City. Please consider joining us, channeling our collective love
and dedication for Hopewell to make this place safer for all.
As always, I appreciate your trust and confidence. These are challenging times for all of us, but
we will always be #better together. We often hear “It takes a village…” Friends, we ARE “the
village” and we can do this if we come together around the good in Hopewell and make a
commitment to focusing our energy and efforts on community solutions to our problems. I
look forward to working with all of you to make our city and its schools a safer place to live,
learn and work.
Melody Hackney
Superintendent of Schools
