The Bull Moves to Rock Hill
Deputy Superintendent Cox clearly remembers the day he met Wren. He was expressing an opinion to a room full of people at a conference in Charleston when Wren stood up and disagreed. Cox went back and forth with the stranger for a moment, in an exchange neither person is comfortable calling an argument these days, and the two were later introduced during the show.
“When we became friends I realized how much he knew,” Cox says of Wren. “He’d been an SRO at Wando High School, which is the largest high school in South Carolina, so I knew he was an ideal candidate for our open emergency management position.”
The stubbornness Wren showed during his debate with Cox came in handy when he faced challenges to his policy proposals early on at Rock Hill Schools.
“I remember my first year, an employee referred to me as being like a bull in a china shop,” Wren says of his aggressive approach. “I came in saying, ‘We need to fix this, we’ll need to get that and change this.’ It’s because I’ve seen firsthand the consequences of not being ready to deal with these situations.”
Wren’s determination is what drives him, but his ability to explain himself is what has allowed him to accomplish so much in Rock Hill.
“It’s human nature to hate change, I hate change too,” Wren says. “Sometimes I heard ‘We’re in Rock Hill, not Charleston.’ But once people understood where I was coming from, that I was passionate about protecting these kids, they got on board. So that’s where I had to start.”
Overhauls a Smashing Success
The 2013 school board meeting actually wasn’t the first time Wren’s public speaking skills had been tested at Rock Hill. Three days after being hired, Wren was asked to give a brief presentation on emergency response to more than a hundred teachers and administrators.
“Most people wouldn’t have even tried to explain the policies, but Kevin had boiled down our main emergency response plans onto green cards that he handed out, so he just stood up and said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, if you can understand these drills, you can handle the rest of the procedures,'” Cox says. “That allowed people to get an understanding of our plans without being overwhelmed with all these pages of information.”
Since that day, Wren’s approach has continued to impress district officials. Early on, Wren made it a priority to improve the district’s relationship with local emergency agencies. He established contacts with the city police department, the York County Sheriff and EMS offices and other crisis management agencies.
“When I sit down with [local law enforcement], I’ve got built in street cred because I was one of them, I’m not an educator,” Wr
en says. “It’s easy talking security with public safety teams because they understand the importance of that stuff, so I’m just preaching to the choir to them.”
Wren added that his relationship with local emergency agencies has helped him craft new emergency operations plans, revise the district’s memorandum of understanding with police and ensure that the district is involved in those agencies’ regional drills and exercises.
RELATED: 2 Students, 1 Teacher Shot at S.C. Elementary School
Since his first meeting, the school board has also been receptive to Wren’s message. Working with board members, Wren has overhauled six safety and security policies in the district and implemented four new policies in areas including visitor management, access control and video surveillance.
Other changes, of course, came at the football stadium. Rock Hill’s South Pointe High School and Northwestern High School won their divisions’ state championships on the same day last year (a fact district officials are quick to mention) and thousands of people regularly attend their games. Wren banned book bags from the stadiums and developed new protocols for crowd evacuations. New severe weather warning and lightning prediction systems were also purchased for stadiums and other key facilities.
Other security upgrades include a new radio system that streamlines lockdown communication, security camera and GPS additions to school buses and a new district-wide video surveillance system.
