After Newtown: New look at security

“I don’t think it could be sadder than this,” Lawrence Superintendent Gary Schall said of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last Friday.

With the sadness came renewed concerns about school security. The Lawrence district instituted extensive security protocols for building lockdowns and rapid student dismissal in emergencies 13 years ago, Schall said, after the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which 12 students and a teacher were killed. In the aftermath of the tragedy in Newtown, he explained, those procedures will be reviewed and updated, and the district will investigate how much more can be done.

“Personally, I want to explore possibilities of a total transformation of our buildings and operations,” Schall said, “to make them impenetrable.” Administrators met on Saturday, he added, and the district’s Health and Safety Committee held an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

The Hewlett-Woodmere School District has guards at the front doors of its five schools and visitors are required to show identification, said Stephanie Gould, president of the Board of Education.

“When something like this occurs, you say to yourself, ‘We should have done anything and everything possible to prevent this,’ but it’s hard to protect schools from this kind of occurrence and statistically schools are generally safe and are not dangerous places,” said Gould, adding that the district’s Health and Safety Committee may also review the security procedures. “I do believe schools are safe and you don’t want to scare kids, you want to make them feel safe.”

Hewlett-Woodmere Superintendent Dr. Joyce Bisso said the district is always committed to safety and security. “Hewlett-Woodmere public schools are constantly monitoring our security procedures, whether or not there is a tragic incident,” she said. “Ongoing monitoring of safety and security procedures is part of the district’s consistent effort to secure the safety of our students, staff and visitors.”

Ensuring that students, faculty and other staff are safe, while maintaining a welcoming environment, is the goal, according to Paul Goldenberg, a security expert with the Secure Community Network, which is dedicated to homeland security initiatives for the Jewish American community. Goldenberg, who has spoken in the Five Towns twice this year about building security, said that education and training is key.

“Instead of putting wire, sensors and gates around schools, empower the teachers, the custodians and the administrators,” he said. “Train them how to respond to a catastrophe.”

Goldenberg is a proponent of Suspicious Activity Reporting, or SARS, training: learning what is suspicious and how to respond. The training, which ideally includes top school officials and local law enforcement, involves run-throughs of possible scenarios and what Goldenberg calls “gap analysis” — learning what is known and not known, such as where radios are located, which exits are open or closed — as well as how to stay alive and take shelter. “These are the steps that institutions should be taking,” he said. “Institutions should have a plan and execute that plan.”

For more information on the Secure Community Network’s work with schools, go to www.scnus.org and click on SCN Safe School Initiative.