BW School District looks at security

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

School dis­tricts nation­wide have been review­ing school build­ing secu­rity since the Decem­ber 14 shoot­ings at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School in New­town, Con­necti­cut. But accord­ing to Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent Gary Bar­ber, Big Wal­nut admin­is­tra­tors have been exam­in­ing secu­rity and safety con­cerns for at least the past six months.

While giv­ing a secu­rity update dur­ing Mon­day evening’s Big Wal­nut board of edu­ca­tion meet­ing, Bar­ber men­tioned a book, Great by Choice, writ­ten by Jim Collins, that describes great orga­ni­za­tions as vigilant.

“It’s called pro­duc­tive para­noia, and one thing we’ve done a good job of this year is being hyper-vigilant,” Bar­ber said. “Over the past six months we reviewed our cri­sis plans, updated emer­gency build­ing plans, com­pleted a safety audit, and com­pleted prac­tice and live drills; and we com­pleted table­top exer­cises, prac­tice that’s not under fire, with the Delaware County Sher­iff, Sun­bury Police Depart­ment and BST&G Fire District.”

Bar­ber also said school safety expert Michael Dorn, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Safe Havens Inter­na­tional, made a pre­sen­ta­tion to dis­trict staff members.

“Dorn spoke to our staff about bul­ly­ing and school secu­rity, and looked at Big Wal­nut Ele­men­tary School’s open class­room lay­out,” Bar­ber said. “We are not unlike other dis­tricts with build­ings built with the open school con­cept of the 1950s and 1960s.”

Bar­ber said the school dis­trict had com­pleted many steps over the past six months to keep build­ing and stu­dent secu­rity as a pri­mary con­cern, but had redou­bled efforts since the Con­necti­cut school shootings.

He described new access pro­ce­dures at dis­trict school build­ings, includ­ing the instal­la­tion of Ai Phones at the entrances, a.k.a. pinch points, of Big Wal­nut Ele­men­tary School, Hylen Soud­ers Ele­men­tary, Big Wal­nut Inter­me­di­ate School and Big Wal­nut High School.

“Vis­i­tors press a but­ton and a pho­to­graph is taken imme­di­ately,” Bar­ber explained. “A sec­re­tary will have an imme­di­ate visual of that per­son and com­mu­ni­cate with them via an inter­com before they gain access to the build­ing. Is this fool­proof? No. But it gives aware­ness of who’s in our build­ings at all times; and if some­body doesn’t report to where they’re sup­posed to be we can react immediately.”

Bar­ber said because of build­ing sec­re­taries attend­ing to other duties, some­one desir­ing access to a build­ing might have to be patient.

“With the Ai Phone there may be a time of day when some­body may be wait­ing out­side for a few min­utes,” Bar­ber said. “It’s a bal­ance between mak­ing our schools safe and Fort Knox.”

Bar­ber said the Ai Phones cost $2,300 per unit; and Big Wal­nut was able to equip the entire dis­trict for the cost of one DVR (Dig­i­tal Video Recorder) unit.

Dis­trict super­in­ten­dent Steve Mazzi said last week admin­is­tra­tors walked all dis­trict build­ings with an archi­tect, exam­in­ing build­ing entrances. Mazzi said no solu­tion is going to be 100 per­cent perfect.

Bar­ber also gave an update on the school district’s plans to con­tract with an out­side provider of an anony­mous report­ing sys­tem to con­form to the man­dates of HB 116, the Jes­sica Logan Act. HB 116 was named in mem­ory of Jes­sica Logan, a Cincin­nati teenager who com­mit­ted sui­cide after being harassed over nude pho­tos she sent to a for­mer boyfriend.

Under man­dates of the Jes­sica Logan Act, edu­ca­tors are respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing com­plaints (includ­ing anony­mous reports) of cyber bul­ly­ing, even if the mate­r­ial was cre­ated on the student’s own time, away from school groups and apart from any school-sanctioned activ­ity. This would include emails, post­ings on Face­book and other social networks.

Bar­ber said the Big Wal­nut dis­trict is enter­ing a con­tract with Safe School Helpline, a com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice using Miami of Ohio grad­u­ates that pro­vides anony­mous report­ing of bul­ly­ing, vio­lence, theft, drug and alco­hol use, talk about sui­cide, sex­ual harass­ment, and weapons.

Bar­ber said Safe School Helpline should go online next Mon­day, after stu­dents and par­ents have all been advised about report­ing procedures.

Bar­ber said he would be the first point of con­tact when an anony­mous report is made, GRE prin­ci­pal Peggy McMurry will be the sec­ond con­tact if Bar­ber is unavail­able, and a third point of con­tact will be the Sun­bury Police Department.

Bar­ber said the Safe School Helpline cost is $.81 per stu­dent, or about $1,900 for one year.

“It’s for stu­dents, teach­ers, staff, admin­is­tra­tors and any­one else in our school com­mu­nity to use 24/7, with a direct con­duit back to our school dis­trict,” Bar­ber said. “It’s what we’re doing to keep a safe, respect­ful and wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment in Big Wal­nut schools. It’s not only a good report­ing sys­tem for us, but also pro­vides coun­sel­ing 24/7,” Bar­ber added. “We’ve been mind­ful, and will con­tinue to be mind­ful, of a pro­vid­ing a safe envi­ron­ment for our students.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.