As we all know, the most important thing in school is safety. Because students are the country’s future, we must make sure school is safe enough to go to. However, in the twenty-first century, there have been more than ten big cases about school shootings that have happened in the United States. For example, in 2018, there was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which caused seventeen death and seventeen injuries. Each of these cases has a lot of impact on every school. Some students might be afraid of going to school and many parents might be worried about the school’s safety. Therefore, it is also important to know how people in the CHC community feel about the environment and safety on our campus.

As students walk in CHC, they might have different views about Cape Henry’s safety. For example, Kevin Lee (’21) expressed, “I feel very safe in the school because every morning when I come to the school, there are always 4 police officers standing in front of the school’s door to protect our safety, and I don’t think some bad people would sneak into the school. I have no worry about the school’s safety.” 

Some students in Cape Henry have also noticed some small details about the school’s safety. Jack Sui (’20) presents that “I think CHC is very safe and it has a complete safety system. For example, the school door is locked from about 8:30 a.m. until about 4:15 p.m., so it prevents some suspicious and bad people from entering the school.” Gary also mentioned that CHC has had several safety lectures in the past several years to our students, so most agree CHC is doing really great in school safety.  

Moreover, Gary Xu (’21) said, “CHC is definitely a good and safe campus because every month we have several safety drills on the campus, and we have cameras everywhere in the school, so the school can easily find and track people who are not from our community. So I think it is very safe in CHC. The only thing I want to change is that we should have a fingerprint system to enter the building when the door is locked because it is easier and faster to get into the building.”

Many people are unaware that there is a new practice in place to pick up students after 4:00 p.m. Mr. Woodhouse, Director of Safety and Security, asks parents to sign in to ensure all adults are not only welcomed but also accounted for.

In the following picture, one of the schools named “Springfield” trained students and staff to get ready for the school shooting drill in February 2018. The security shows how to deal with this kind of issue. It is important because it shows that many schools have more alerts and more consciousness about preventing students from being in danger. 

After school shootings across the nation, many schools, including Cape Henry, have learned a lot of lessons from these tragedies. They have developed safer and easier safety systems to prevent students from attacking other people. CHC has changed a lot on the school safety system, and many individuals are stilling working on how to improve it. Also, as technology is developed, the school can use these technologies to detect people and protect students. Therefore, CHC students and CHC parents really can believe in CHC’s safety.