Jesse Milne is pictured Tuesday during a meeting of the Jamestown Public Schools board. P-J photo by Eric Tichy

Several parents have called for the installation of metal detectors in Jamestown Public Schools as complaints of bullying and safety concerns have been aired at recent board of education meetings.

Dr. Kevin Whitaker, Jamestown schools superintendent, said he has no issues with metal detectors and his beliefs on such technology and its use in schools have not changed.

But, he said, implementation would need to meet the expectations and desires of the district’s Safety and Security Committee as well as the backing of the community.

“If the community is willing to live with the ancillary consequences of that, whether that’s the cost, students waiting a little bit longer outside or secondary searches if it were to alarm, those sorts of things — ongoing staffing costs to staff metal detectors,” Whitaker said, “if those things are the case, then I have no issue with metal detectors.

“Metal detectors just come with other associated issues. Whether they are any of those things, and whether or not the community is willing to support those things or not, is a different question we have to work through as a committee.

“Once you go in that direction, one of the other things that follow, is that it has to always be the case.

So it’s metal detectors in school, but it’s also metal detectors for plays, for musicals and sporting events.”

Discussions on use of metal detectors, weapons detection technology and sensors on doors have popped up in the last couple of weeks after a parent, Raquel Diaz, stated her son was being bullied by another student. Diaz spoke to members of the Jamestown Public Schools Board this month after a particular bullying incident in which she said her son was attacked.

In a message to parents last week, Whitaker said the district acted within an hour of being made aware of the incident with further action taken in the week after the long Columbus Day weekend. Actions against the youth involved were, according to Whitaker’s statement, “swift and severe.”

On Tuesday, several people spoke to the school board. Some questioned why metal detectors and other safety features are not being utilized in the high school.

Jesse Milne, who has students in the middle and high schools, alluded to schools in Niagara Falls and Buffalo that either have a weapons detection system in place or will have them shortly.

“They’re not metal detectors,” Milne said of the technology. “They’re concealed weapon detectors, two totally different things. Fifty people a minute can pass through these units, so basically 23 minutes the whole high school can be inside.”

Tamu Reinhardt, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion coordinator for the school district, also spoke Tuesday as a parent. She did not address security features, but rather collaboration and what the public can do to help such as volunteering, tutoring and being a mentor to a student.

“We need help. The district needs help,” she said. “And so while I can appreciate the frustrations that people are sharing today, and your frustrations are valid and I want to acknowledge them, I would also ask that if you are interested in being part of the solution, then we all should get together.”

The district’s recent capital project included new, pan/tilt/zoom cameras and networks, alarms on exterior doors that notify staff that one has been opened, new secure entry access processes at doorways, and the construction of secure vestibules.

During Tuesday’s school board meeting, the superintendent said he was expanding the existing Safety and Security Committee “from an internal group to a much more representative one. One that includes staff, teachers, students, parents, community members, administrators and specialists in school safety and security.”

Whitaker also encouraged use of the district’s website for community feedback on a range of concerns or ideas. That information, he said, can be submitted anonymously at jpsny.org/feedback. On that page, the public will find a link to sign up for the Safety and Security Committee.