No matter where you might stand on the upcoming Forney ISD Bond Election, all residents of Forney should be proud of a recent article in the Dallas Morning News. On the front page of this past Sunday’s paper, the News ran an article titled Forney a Model for Security in Schools.

The article discusses the Texas Safe School Award that Forney received last year for the security at L.E. Claybon Elementary. What I found most interesting about the article is the approach Forney ISD is taking – the article opens with a discussion about how a stranger (who turned out to be the Dallas Morning News reporter) was standing outside of Claybon recently one morning as students began arriving for the day. Within two minutes, a secretary was challenging the stranger and asking who they were and why they were there, and a few minutes later a “Forney ISD official” arrived and asked the stranger to leave the campus immediately.

Instead of trusting in technology and the latest gadgets to detect threats to the students, the article shows how Forney is focusing on intelligent building layouts (front offices that look out on the main entrance to the school, etc.), training their teachers and staff to look for people who don’t belong and challenge them, and other security measures such as requiring visitors to prove their identity by providing their driver’s license. It’s an impressive, intelligent approach to school safety, and one other districts would do well to model.
While a lot of the focus around town is on the city of Forney and all the new development, businesses, restaurants and retailers moving in, but it’s just as exciting to me to watch Forney ISD grow – with projects such as the electronic textbook pilot program and the focus on school safety, it’s clear that Forney ISD is on the cutting edge of creating a safe, rich and wholesome learning environment that incorporates the best technology has to offer.

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