Senate Bill 68 didn’t just take phones out of Missouri schools — it also strengthened security, making annual physical security site assessments mandatory.

At its Nov. 19 meeting, the Community R-6 Board of Education voted unanimously to move forward with a safety assessment by Gray Ram Tactical LLC.

“We wanted to go ahead and do that with a company that is going to do a thorough examination of what we have and take a look at it, not only from an educational standpoint, but from a tactical standpoint as well,” Superintendent Chad Harter said.

Despite there being potentially cheaper ways to satisfy the requirements of SB68, Gray Ram Tactical was appealing to Harter and the Board of Education for a number of reasons.

For one, Gray Ram Tactical is based in Higginsville, which Harter said keeps the money more local. The company will also provide the district with professional development services, such as intruder training.

“We just want to make sure that the campus is well lit, provides good safety where we are located here on Highway 19 (and) we want to make sure we have a full view of all areas of campus,” he added.

Even before it was mandatory, the district has been making security improvements by adding more cameras, yet there is still a lot of ground behind the main building that cannot be fully seen, and various blind spots in the building remain. Harter anticipates the assessment will identify areas of campus that require more light as well as ideal locations for new cameras.

“I think it will do a lot of things to shore up loose ends we have from a security standpoint,” he said.

At the meeting, the board also discussed the improvements being made to education.

Harter reported that both English and math scores at Community R-6 are as high, if not higher than they have ever been, but the Annual Performance Report showed little growth.

“What we are experiencing right now is a leveling off of that growth,” Harter said. “If you have someone like Mark McGuire that hits 45 home runs and then hits 70 the next year, it’s really difficult to expect him to hit 95 the next year.”

Community R-6 still scored above the state average and will look at college and career readiness as an area for improvement to boost next year’s scores.

“That’s something that we can affect perennially," Harter said. “I’d say that would be an increase of about 3% in our score on an annual basis.”

In order to foster college and career readiness, the district offers the ACT and the ASVAB, but Harter and Principal Bob Davies have been discussing ways to add other state recognized tests such as the WorkKeys test, Acuplacer and opportunities for the SAT in lieu of the ACT.

The goal, Harter said, is to make testing relevant to the students, and changes could be implemented as early as next year.

“We think that’ll impact our scores just by increasing relevance and opportunities.”