Roanoke City School Board receives annual school safety audit

Police chief: "Roanoke City schools are the safest they've ever been."

ROANOKE, Va. – Many students are headed back to school right now and one local division is taking a look at safety.

The Roanoke City School Board received its annual school safety audit tonight.

It detailed the accomplishments and where there's still room to grow.

The school division is proud of the boatload of work staff did to get to this point, and they are ready for students to return to class next week.

The Safety Audit Committee presented its report Tuesday night. 

It's broken down into two focus areas: physical safety and what we can call mental safety.

In physical safety, the school division used $100,000 to upgrade radios and security cameras and allocated $2 million to be used for other security upgrades at all schools.

In the future, it wants to prioritize remaining concerns and work with partners to create better drills.

In mental safety, parents were surveyed to assess their concerns at schools.

New behavior programs were implemented and anti-bullying measures were put in place.

Former Roanoke City Police Chief Chris Perkins came on board as head of security earlier this year. He's looking forward to his first true school year and says Roanoke City schools are the safest they've ever been.

"I give extreme kudos to the school board, the superintendent and this staff, because when I went walking through those schools, it was clear that they were already thinking about this long before I got here, so I'm extremely impressed with everything they've done," said Perkins. 

Perkins declined to share many of the specifics of the plans with us, citing the need to keep them confidential, although he did say the key to keeping everyone safe is good communication and making sure people know their concerns matter.