School officials weigh safety audit

Burbank school officials will likely hire an auditor to assess the safety of local schools — a move prompted, in part, by two thefts that occurred last month at two Burbank elementary schools.

On Oct. 7, a woman allegedly walked into empty classrooms at Bret Harte and Emerson elementary schools and stole teachers’ credit cards and money. She reportedly went on to use the credit cards to make purchases in Burbank and Glendale stores. She was arrested this week.

School officials shared their stances on the issue during a recent board meeting, emphasizing to the community that local schools are generally safe.

“The fact that we had an issue on our campuses pains all of us,” said school board member Larry Applebaum. “The reality that does exist is that if somebody wants to get into someplace bad enough, they will.”

Still, Supt. Matt Hill suggested bringing on a firm to conduct a safety audit, something he said he had intended to do when he started in the district’s top job in July.

“I wanted someone to look at emergency kits, building safety, procedures and policies, and come back with recommendations,” he said.

A formal proposal to hire a firm is expected to go before the school board for consideration on Dec. 17. If the board chooses to hire the firm, then it could conduct an audit in January, Hill said.

“What this firm is going to do is look globally at the district and each site about what we can do,” he added.

Applebaum also spoke about striking a balance between secured campuses and a learning environment.

“While we talk about all the things that we try to do to try to keep our schools safe, keep our children safe, we also have to recognize that we can only do so much before we start turning [schools] into penitentiaries, and we don’t want to do that,” Applebaum said. “That’s not the environment [in which] we want to send our kids to school.”

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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan