Schools worry about student safety when their facilities are used as polling places

Louisville Public Media

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — At Mount Washington Elementary School in Kentucky’s Bullitt County, tiny kids excitedly lined up for the bus. Overhead, a loudspeaker blared names of last-minute car riders. It’s organized chaos.

In the middle of it all, Troy Wood, head of operations for the local school system, demonstrated how voters would have to navigate this same hallway during early voting.

“They’d roll through these double doors, walk through this main lobby area and access the gymnasium that way,” Wood said, spinning around and pointing out each intersection. “We'd have to shut off these two main hallways if students were on site.”

Wood says the district has always hosted voting on Election Day and built it into the calendar as a day off from school. But they asked not to be considered for three days of early voting, starting on Halloween this year.

Wood says early voting disrupts their calendar. If they tried to keep schools open during early voting, even with extra security, the kids would be vulnerable to people coming in to vote.

“It’s a decision that you don’t win either way,” Wood said. “If you cancel school, folks are going to be upset, and if you show up, they're going to be upset because you put kids at risk. So [it’s a] tough call, either way.”

And with early voting more broadly available, and political tensions high, it’s a tough call more communities across the country are facing.

But in Kentucky’s Bullitt County, Clerk Kevin Mooney says he needs those schools. He’s required to offer early voting, but says the county doesn’t have enough suitable places like public gyms or libraries. And with a presidential race and multiple constitutional amendments on the state ballot this fall, he’s expecting a really high turnout.

“The size of the parking lot matters,” Mooney said, listing all the minute details he has to consider when selecting polling sites. “We wanted to utilize the schools because they’re the best facilities in our county.”

Like the school system, Mooney is also aware of the tradeoff.

“The last thing any of us want is for something horrific to happen in a school location,” Mooney said.

Ultimately, Mooney, backed by a new Kentucky law and the state election board, overrode the school system. So early voting will happen in the schools.

“In this case, this particular change helps me,” Mooney said.

Wood says that power to override the school district is frustrating.

“They went by the letter of the law, and the law says he could commandeer our schools, if so desired,” Wood said. “So that’s what they went by.”

Wood says it left a lot of questions about liability if someone was to attack a student, like: Would the district be responsible, or the county clerk for overriding their refusal? In the end the school board said the concerns were too great and they felt forced to cancel classes on those few early voting days.

Louisville Public Media

Across the state, officials say safety concerns are making it harder to convince schools to participate in elections, especially for multiple days of early voting.

“On Election Day, we have some ability to close schools for that, but we need more than one day to vote, we need early voting,” Secretary of State Michael Adams said in a discussion with The Washington Post. “The schools would be a great part of that but they’ve been really resistant. Candidly, they don’t want to have some random person in the general public able to come on the premises and scope the place out and become an active shooter.”

It’s not just in Kentucky. Schools have made moves to bow out from voting in Missouri, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York City. In Arizona the largest school district recently announced it would stop hosting polls.

“It's really concerning,” said Ben Hovland, chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. “Schools make such excellent polling places. They're centrally located, people know where they are, they're accessible.”

Hovland says schools are justifiably worried. But he says schools and municipal officials can work together to find solutions, which might mean planning school calendars around voting days.

“That's actually something that's very familiar for election officials, balancing access and security,” he said.

The conversation around the right balance between election access and school security is likely far from over in Kentucky. Bullitt County Schools is asking the General Assembly to change the law when legislators come back in session, so that schools can’t be forced into early voting.