At the first home football game Sept. 6, administration and security directors introduced a new wave of safety measures to ensure the protection of those attending.
The idea of implementing security gates and metal detectors was not a new discussion. The school administration has been preparing the process of setting up these security systems for months and has been talking about it for even longer. “We were kicking around the idea first semester of last year,” principal Brad Griffith said. “We started looking at various solutions with a weapons detection system, and then landed on a specific company once the board received the information and authorized the purchase. [Then], this summer, district-wide, at various locations throughout the building, bullet resistant laminate was added to all of our windows.”
This is only the first step of many security measures to come. The usage of the metal detector gates at sporting events serve as a strong deterrent for violence, but also as a testing point to consider the implementation of the security gates daily.
After seeing the gates at the football games, some students have had a hard time imagining them being implemented at entrances in school. Anastasia Chostner (12) has some concern about how school mornings may look in the future.
“It might be a bit difficult,” Chostner said. “There are three whole entrances you can come in from, [so] it could be hard with people at arrival times in the morning.”
There are still issues to be addressed before the gates are implemented. One of these issues is the sensitivity of the system with hard-pressed metals like laptops and water bottles.
“The issue is we have 1,400 students with [laptops] in their backpacks,” Griffith said. “Every student is going to have to take out their laptop and raise it up in the air to put it beyond the sensor so the administrator and the support staff member can see.”
Many of the proposed solutions are under development and testing. If the detectors are put in at school daily, it will be a transition for everyone to adjust to.
“I would expect it’s just like traffic on Warson for the first two weeks of school,” Griffith said. “It’s a mess. Then, everybody figures it out, settles into a routine and it becomes manageable.”
![The Ladue School District School Board held an open meeting Dec. 11 to wrap up the calendar year and discuss policy changes for next year. One such agenda item was changes to the Ladue Middle School curriculum for the 2025-26 school year, which included the addition of broadcast courses. “We're excited about that option, the trajectory that goes into [Ladue] High School,” Angela Thompson, Ladue Middle School principal, said. “We want to be able to have that opportunity.”](https://laduepublications.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/DSC07353-1200x675.jpg)
