As people around here continue to process their disbelief over the mass murder at a Connecticut elementary school last week, they also happen to be full of suggestions. They are brimming with ideas — some legal, some not — for how to keep local schools safer, and Associate Superintendent Bill Nolte has heard them all.

Maybe all teachers should be required to carry guns, some say. Maybe all schools should have buzz-in systems, say others.

Policies, however, are not about shift at Haywood County Schools. The district's protocols are "very extensive," Nolte explained, that's not the kind of thing that changes on a whim.

"What we've been telling people is that if we make changes to a system that is really pretty good — not perfect, but really pretty good — we want to make a thoughtful, sound ...