DERWOOD, Md. — Police lined the entry as Magruder High School students returned to the classroom for the first time since Friday's brutal shooting of a 15-year-old in the boy's bathroom.
One officer carried a sign saying "You are loved!" as he called out, "Good morning!" to students walking inside.
Friday's shooting has a lot of us asking how we can prevent something like this from happening again.
It's a question school administrators are struggling with right now.
Just months after Montgomery County removed resource officers, they'll be back in schools for at least the next week.
According to investigators, there were multiple students in the bathroom when a 17-year-old shot the 10th grader, critically wounding him. Instead of calling 911, those witnesses took to social media, bragging about what they'd seen, Police Chief Marcus Jones said.
"There's a time and place for social media," Chief Jones said. "But there's a time and place where we need to help our fellow man."
Asked how he felt about having armed police officers in his school, Riley Miller, 14, said, "It's a good thing. Less bad activity. Things like that." He hopes they can head off more trouble.
But Friday's shooting inside the boy's bathroom has renewed the debate on whether - in addition to unarmed school security guards - there should be police officers permanently stationed inside schools.
"Yes, there were positives to the program. There were also negatives to the program," interim schools Superintendent Monifa McKnight said about the old school resource officers program. It was replaced with what police call "community engagement officers" who patroled outside schools and could respond as needed.
Critics argued that in the 19 years when resource officers did patrol the halls of Montgomery County high schools, they disproportionately arrested students of color, and often for minor offenses that could have been handled in other ways.
"We're in this debate nationally about, 'Does more police equal more safety?' I would say it doesn't," said Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando, who was one of the early advocates of removing school resource officers. "We're under-invested in the things we know work: Counselors work. Social workers work. And I just think police are the wrong tool," he said.
Officers were first stationed in Montgomery schools a few years after the mass shooting at Columbine in Colorado. And the past president of the National Association of School Resource Officers says well-trained police can still make a huge difference.
"I think school resource officers are critical," said Don Bridges, a Baltimore County school resource officer.
But in this case, the police chief says the victim refused to tell officers who shot him. He says he initially did not even share that he was shot.
The superintendent says she's trying to figure out the best way to improve security over the long term.