Building manager says La Crosse schools have good safety practices

You know the expression “if you see something, say something.”  It’s advice to young people, as a way of preventing possible trouble, and the La Crosse School District promotes the idea. 

The district manager of buildings and grounds, Scott Johnson, encourages students to use an app known statewide as “speak up, speak out.”

“A lot of times, they’ll see something and go home, and be like, I just don’t know if I can say this or not,” Johnson tells reporters. “But with this anonymous reporting, they can send it to us, we get it…the SRO’s and law enforcement get it.”

Johnson also says school resource officers in La Crosse have been a good way of helping keep schools safe.  He spoke with reporters at a conference on school security, held at Central High.         

Schools in America tend to be much less open than they used to be decades ago, when school shootings and similar attacks were more rare. 

Johnson manages buildings and grounds in the La Crosse School District, and he says the local schools have a routine in place.

“We do background checks on all our volunteers,” he says. “They come to the main office, they’re checked in, they’re given a badge so that when they are in the hallway, they know that they’ve been checked in.”    

Two school buildings, Northside and Hamilton, begin their year-round class schedule on Thursday.  The rest of the La Crosse schools are scheduled to open September 1st.