Suffolk Public Schools plans to update safety measures at its schools before the end of the school year.

Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Dr. Suzanne Rice addressed the School Board at its meeting last Thursday regarding current safety measures and improvements that will occur in the coming months.

“We have increased our awareness a little bit more for some of the lockdown drills and changed some of the formatting in light of recent incidents,” Rice said.

Changes to the building security systems as well as the security teams will also take place.

Currently, most Suffolk Public Schools have access panels on their front doors. All doors remain locked, and guests have to buzz the panel to be allowed entry. The front office has the ability to allow or deny entry.

“We are adding them to four schools, and we hope to have them done by the end of the school year,” Rice said during the meeting.

With new access panels, the schools will ramp up their security teams on school grounds as well. Secondary schools currently have school resource officers and school security monitors. The division hopes to add one more security monitor at all high schools, as well as add these monitors to every school in the city.

Security monitors receive training from Department of Criminal Justice Services and The Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety. Their job is to run the access panels, check doors and be aware of any trespassers.

The schools will also see more video monitoring on school property, and cameras will be added in key locations in elementary schools.

While having systems in place to prevent harmful activity, in the event of a threat, the division has threat assessment teams at every school. These teams were trained just a few months ago, according to Rice.

These teams take a threat to harm self or others and determine the level of the threat.

“The threat assessment teams are made of administrators, counselors, teachers and school resource officers. The size of the team varies by school, and they received eight-hour training from the Department of Criminal Justice Services and The Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety,” Rice said in an email.

Along with building security, Suffolk Public Schools has and will continue to implement changes with student protocols. The division is implementing different protocols to change behavior in students rather than traditional methods.

A handful of staff has been trained on positive behavior intervention as well as a restructured in-school suspension model. Along with positive behavior, mental health is an on-going curriculum item for eighth- and 10th-grade students, and one teacher from each school has been trained on anti-bullying protocols.