Murrieta School District Steps Up School Safety


Though school is still out, school safety officers are not setting aside their job responsibilities. Indeed, many school safety officials are continuing to prepare and plan for the coming school year. Wayne Sakamoto, director of the Safe Schools Unit of the Murrieta School District, took his position a year ago and is excited to implement new plans.

The Press-Enterprise reports:

As director of the Safe Schools Unit, he performed safety walks at each campus, organized employee training in threat prevention and brought parents into the dialogue.

“The first year was kind of a building-block year for our newly formed department,” Sakamoto, 51, said. “This year we are beginning to implement our efforts, full-speed ahead.”

New programs to be expected in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District include a youth task force on bully prevention, gang-diversion program and youth development.

The school district already had security cameras scanning campuses and held forums on diversity and drug and alcohol prevention. Sakamoto is charged with bringing all district safety measures and services together and keeping ahead of trends.

Most of the things detailed above are not really groundbreaking, if you think about it. What impressed me about Sakamoto’s plan is this:

A cornerstone of Sakamoto’s approach to school safety is putting the onus on children. Students have to be part of the process in promoting a positive school culture, he said.

“They don’t look at compassion as a possible character trait,” Sakamoto said about youths nowadays. “They look at being a thug as positive.”

One way to counteract that would be to identify students who are kind and altruistic and can be leaders among their peers.

” ‘Respect’ and ‘citizenship’ aren’t just words. They’re actions,” he said.

The whole idea of creating and promoting a “positive school culture” is, I believe, one of the main keys is fostering a safe school environment. Indeed, today, it seems that to be respected and to be looked up to, school children have to be tough. A child has to be able to hold his own and to step on others in order to be left alone and not messed with.

Though being tough has its merits, wouldn’t it be much better for everyone involved if traits such as compassion were to be valued more? I know that many teens would probably not like the idea of acting like a “wuss” but this is the point exactly. We need to instill new values in them and to help realize that being a thug is not necessarily the right thing to be.

Don't miss another post -- subscribe by email or RSS today!

Comments are closed.