Security will be even tighter when Inland area youths return to school this fall. Some teen-agers will be required to submit to hand-held metal detectors. Others will be funneled into new programs to aid troubled students.

Nearly four months after violence ravaged Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., educators still are looking for new and creative ways to beef up security. Tuesday's shooting spree at a Los Angeles Jewish day camp reinforces the belief that what once couldn't happen here probably could.

The decision to spend more dollars on safety is a tough one for school districts that need new textbooks, more teachers and better computers. Even so, many districts are anteing up the cash.

The Corona-Norco Unified School District has created a new $48,000-a-year manager of campus security job to whip safety plans into shape and train staff this fall.

Paloma Valley High School in Menifee will have a full-time uniformed police officer for the first time when school is back in session.

Rialto school officials purchased a computerized gadget to pick students at random to be searched for weapons. Hand-held wands will be run over the outside of chosen students' clothing, and backpacks and purses will be examined.

Rialto school board member Lou Herz said parents seem largely reassured by the extra protection.

"It's a different world we live in, and you have to take added precautions or you could be sued," he said. "We just had a kid beaten up pretty badly in the Rialto High School parking lot, and now I think we should add roving patrols because that shouldn't happen, either."

Police and schools increasingly are working together on Inland area campuses. New partnerships have created a safety training academy that will debut in the Perris Union High School District on Sept. 1 with the aid of law enforcement experts. The district will put its 25-member civilian security force through a three-day workshop where they can learn how to profile gang members, deal with drugs, use conflict resolution and know the warning signs of when a student is in trouble.

"Historically, our security officers have only received minimal first aid and CPR training," said Dave Heard, the district's safety security manager.

Teachers and administrators will attend the workshops next. Capt. Stan Sniff, commander of the Ben Clark Public Safety Training Center for the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, said he will build on the pilot program so that school districts throughout the county can benefit from the same courses.

The San Bernardino school police will lead a safety seminar for principals later this month on how to make campuses safer. But school Police Chief Gary Underwood cautioned against assuming schools can become impenetrable.

"They aren't fortresses and you can't always stop shootings," he said. "If there are people who will come to a Jewish school to shoot little babies, then it's hard to stop that. I know people don't want to hear that."

Creg Datig, supervising Riverside County deputy district attorney in charge of the juvenile division, said his department is drafting a new protocol for dealing with students who make threats to commit acts of violence to another student or staff member. The plan would put schools, prosecutors, police and probation officers on the same page when this occurs.

"Many times, if you wait until a kid has laid his hands on a firearm, it's too late," Datig said.

Many Inland area schools lacking clear crisis plans last year are fine-tuning drastic new ones. If a "Level I" -- that's a Columbine-type crisis -- were to erupt at Redlands East Valley High School this fall, a secret announcement would alert teachers over the loudspeaker system.

"The students wouldn't understand it," Principal Tom Davis said. "They would just think it was a standard announcement."

But the teachers would instantly go into lock-down mode. They would put pieces of paper over the windows, so an intruder could not peer inside. Teachers have been instructed to keep the telephones open to incoming calls and to flip the television sets to a certain channel where they can receive an immediate emergency broadcast.

This fall, the Redlands campus also will begin a peer mentor program to help troubled teen-agers work through their problems.

Ronald Stephens, director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake, which monitors school violence through news accounts, said these same measures are echoing in school halls throughout the nation.

"After Columbine when there were some 3,000 bomb threats at schools nationwide, educators couldn't wait for school to get out," Stephens said. "Now, I'm hearing that the summer is far too short. There's still a lot of safety planning to do."

Stephens said the Jewish community center shooting has added a new dimension to the anxiety.

"Generally, preschools and day care centers have been immune," he said. "But this is a reminder that no school is."

Congregation Emanu El, a Jewish synagogue in San Bernardino, has taken precautions -- keeping children away from visible playgrounds on its preschool, kindergarten and elementary campus and restricting access to the classrooms from three doors to one.

"But we're not going to give into hysteria, either," Rabbi Hillel Cohn said. "We're not going to turn our educational facility into an armed campus because if we do that, these crazies have really had their way."

Sherry Parmet can be reached by e-mail at sparmet@pe.com or by phone at (909) 890-4459.

Published 8/15/1999