Following the 2018 Valentine’s Day tragedy in Parkland, Florida in which 17 people lost their lives at a high school mass shooting, the state of Michigan began rethinking some of its school safety measures. In December 2018, those changes were approved by the state legislature under former Governor Rick Snyder.

Though the state has a new legislature, new governor and new cabinet, those requirements are continually being rolled out. One such requirement schools have to follow is to appoint a district safety liaison to the yet-to-be-created state Office of School Safety. On March 13, the Oxford Board of Education decided that person would be Sam Barna.

“This is some fairly new legislation that came into play,” Superintendent Tim Throne said. “I’ll say it this way, I don’t think the state has everything in place that it thought it would have in place. But, at the end of the day, they wanted to mandate that every district appoint a single person as the school safety liaison.”

Barna, who serves as the district’s assistant superintendent of business operations, was approved in a unanimous 7-0 vote. Throne said the district is unsure what this role will entail, but wanted to stay on top of this new requirement.

“We want to meet the letter of the law, but we don’t want to do anything more right now because we think some things are going to change,” he said.

Because the role’s purpose is still a little murky, Throne said he will come back to the board as things become more clear.

“There will be some additional follow-up things that come,” he said. “There is a resolution we will be bringing before you.”

Barna could need additional training as the safety liaison, but the role is not expected to be a paid one or something that will shift much of Barna’s daily focus.

“I don’t view this requirement as something that is time-intensive or something that is not necessarily doing anything that we’re not already doing,” Throne said. “It’s more of a designation.”

David Pass, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, added that Barna already does a lot of what the district expects he’ll need to do as part of his work with business operations.

“There will be certain expectations about meeting with the state police regarding construction things, all things that are already current practice,” Pass said.

The board of education is scheduled to meet again on March 26 at Daniel Axford Elementary. Meetings start at 6:30 p.m.