Are schools as safe as they could be?

XENIA, Ohio (WDTN) - Ohio's Attorney General thinks he has a plan that could lower the risk of school shootings in the state, but 2 NEWS has learned not all schools are following along yet.

Training for a tragedy is something Kettering SWAT did at Fairmont High School in June and something Attorney General Mike DeWine thinks could one day make the difference.

"We have some idea of what works and what doesn't work and how you can minimize the loss of life," DeWine says.

That's why DeWine is urging all of the state's schools to comply with a law requiring them to submit a safety plan for situations like the one in Connecticut or the shooting earlier this year at Chardon High School.

"I think the most important thing a school can do is have a safety plan and actually practice that plan," DeWine says.

Along with that safety plan, officials are also asked to submit a floor plan so if the worst happens, officers know what they're dealing with because not everyone will have trained there like Kettering SWAT did at Fairmont.

"If you have a neighboring jurisdiction responding as backup they might not know that school at all," DeWine says.

But 2 NEWS has learned that at this point more than a hundred schools across the state have yet to submit their plans.

"I wouldn't want to be a school superintendent who didn't do this," DeWine says.

So 2 NEWS took a look at the Miami Valley area schools on the list.

One is perhaps the most secure school in the state.

"For someone to enter they have to go through the metal detector," says Montgomery County Juvenile Court Administrator James Cole. "They can't enter unless somebody buzzes them in."

But the school inside the Montgomery County Juvenile Court Building is among those that haven't submitted a safety plan to the Ohio Attorney General's Office.

"It's an oversight on our part that we're correcting at this time," Cole says.

In recent months the Attorney General's office has been calling and writing letters to make sure all those plans are on file.

"We think it can make a difference and if it can save some lives it is imperative that we do it," DeWine says.

A little more than 100 schools are on the list of those who haven't complied yet, but some say they don't belong, like Xenia Christian, whose President told 2 NEWS the district always submits it's plan and in fact made some security upgrades recently.

They believe it's simply a miscommunication on the state's part, but they're working to clear it up because they want people to know they take student safety very seriously.

As the plans come in, DeWine's office will look at them to see where improvements can be made.

"What we're trying to make sure is the schools understand what the best practices are," DeWine says.