A group of Highland Park High School parents have called for more thorough school entrance screenings after a recent unlawful bathroom video-recording situation, but the district has pushed back against what it calls “misleading and false information” about the incident.
In mid-February, a joint release from the city of Highland Park, Township High School District 113 and North Shore School District 112, said a student was found to have taken video recordings in two school bathrooms; Edgewood Middle School and Highland Park High.
Members of Parents for Securing our Schools, a group founded after an incident in 2023 during which a Highland Park High student brought a handgun to school, criticized the school’s existing safety measures, suggesting increased use of the school’s metal detectors would have prevented the recording situation.
Suzanne Wahl, a member of Parents SOS whose daughter goes to the high school, said she believed there are too many opportunities for students to sneak things into the school, such as during afterschool events.
“What we want is very simple: Every entrance, every hour, every day,” she said.
Wahl also said she doesn’t know the timeline for informing affected students and parents, and is still uncertain if her own daughter had been victimized.
She said she was “outraged” when she heard about the incident and questioned if the school’s metal detectors, installed in 2023, had been utilized properly.
In an email sent to the district, Wahl said the incident, “underscores the fact that Highland Park High School has no consistent, reliable security measures to prevent dangerous (and potentially deadly) items from entering the school”
However, a district spokesperson said the recordings were taken with a cellphone, which are allowed at the schools. The district has pushed back against this and several other claims made by Parents SOS, including Wahl’s belief that the suspected student had utilized “tools” to install the video recorder that would have been detected by a properly run weapons detection system, an allegation a district spokesperson called “patently false.”
During a Board of Education meeting on Feb. 25, District 113 Superintendent Chala Holland said there were attempts to “use the moment for a different agenda,” leading to “misleading and false information” being presented online and during a previous board meeting.
“While I recognize that the reported behavior of video recording in a restroom is of great concern, it was inaccurate and inappropriate to link the misconduct with our weapons detection matters,” Holland said.
The majority of students and adults carry their phones with them to school, she said, and no amount of entrance screening would have prevented the incident.
“The truth is that this is a rare and unforeseeable occurrence,” Holland said.
In late February, a follow-up release from District 113 detailed additional measures taken by the schools to prevent a similar incident in the future, including the installation of ceiling hold-down clips to secure ceiling tiles and deter tampering in “sensitive areas” in bathrooms across both schools. Security personnel had also added “enhanced monitoring” to their regular protocols to look for tampering or hidden items in bathrooms.
According to the district spokesperson, the school has metal detectors at every entrance, and has launched a new procedure requiring students to go through them on a randomized basis on arrival. Visitors and students who arrive after the bell also go through them upon entry.
The call by Parents SOS for escalating weapons detection systems usage would turn entering the school into something like an airport screening, the spokesperson said.
“And at the airport, you must empty your pockets, take off your coat, belt and shoes, remove your laptop, etc., every single time,” the spokesperson said. “Remember, there’s no such thing as pre-check in the school environment. Many students are in our buildings 12+ hours a day. Our students can’t leave necessities at home like water bottles, coats, musical instruments, sporting equipment, laptops, Chromebooks, binders, eyeglass cases, keys, etc.”
Rather than solely rely on the metal detectors, the spokesperson said the district deploys “multiple layers of security,” including a K9 team, video surveillance, school resource officers and various other safety programs because, “no one method is the only solution.”
But the “most successful” way to keep students and staff safe, based on research from various federal organizations, is “establishing a connection between students and their schools — belonging,” the spokesperson said.
