After Uvalde shooting, LMCS reviews safety plan

Social workers, law enforcement help

By Osei Helper | Manor Ink

Livingston Manor, NY – The fear of shootings, especially in school settings, has been on the rise due to recent events. Most notably was the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, TX, in which 21 people were killed and 18 others injured (some of whom died later). It was the third deadliest school shooting in United States history, so the increased safety concerns of the public are not unexpected.

“The safety and security of all of the students and the teachers is a primary concern all the time,” said John Evans, superintendent of the Roscoe and Livingston Manor school districts. Every year, before the start of school, the school’s safety plan must be approved by the local Board of Education. After the board approves the plan, it goes to the state in October. The school safety team, composed of school administrators and law enforcement, meets multiple times a year to discuss the safety plan as well as the physical safety of the school. They also partake in trainings.

Accessibility now a liability

In the past, both parts of the safety plan, the district plan and the building plan, were publicly accessible. The district plan gave general safety measures, but the building plan had a great amount of detail about people, their specific jobs and other safety measures. This became an issue.

“If I go into great detail, describe a lot of our safety measures and safety procedures, it’s basically saying if someone wants to do something bad, here’s all the things he or she needs to work around,” said Evans. By posting the building plan, the school was essentially sharing information helpful to a perpetrator. Now, only the district plan is open access, so that the public has only a general idea of the safety provisions.

In development of the safety plan, the school safety team goes to trainings that discuss the best ways to create an effective response. The team also does safety training with law enforcement agencies. These cover first responder plans, different practices and impart knowledge on utilizing resources. Under the guidance of law enforcement, school shooter drills are run using faculty members as student stand-ins.

The drafted plans must be posted for the public to see before the board accepts them. At all times, the public is able to contact Supt. Evans or any other school administrator, or they can attend one of the board meetings to express their thoughts and concerns.

LMCS takes additional precautions

Over the years, LMCS has made many safety changes. These include advanced security cameras that are both inside and outside the building. Doors are locked at all times and require a key card to enter. There’s a school resource officer. There are also lock buttons that put the building into “lockdown mode,” and which trigger strobe lights both inside and outside as a visual indicator of a lockdown event.

“One of the conversations that we’re having right now is having additional security personnel,” said Evans. “You know, would that make people feel safer? Would that make kids feel safer if there were additional, trained security people? Not necessarily another school resource officer, but a different level of security.”

One safety feature that is relatively unknown by the general public is that the building’s glass is reinforced with a ballistic film. The function of this film is to not only act as a bullet resistor, but to also make entry by breaking the glass far more difficult and time consuming.

Another issue that can cause school violence is mental health and the social climate. While the safety team doesn’t discuss these types of issues publicly, Evans said, “Those conversations are happening.” The School Climate Transformation Grant, a federal initiative that provides support for improving school environments, has funded extra mental health resources, including a full-time social worker and two additional full time school counselors, according to Evans. The school has multiple meetings throughout the year to touch on these subjects with a separate group of school counselors, teachers and other administrators. On the law enforcement side, there’s even the Red Flag Law, which prevents people seen as a danger to themselves or others from obtaining firearms.

The issue of school safety is an ever changing one. We need to make an effort to not just neutralize threats, but to fundamentally change the environment so that those threats become a thing of the past.