District seeks to hire director of school security

Rockville Centre school administrators continue to discuss ways to enhance school security in the wake of the shooting at a parochial school in Nashville, Tennessee, late last month.

“Once again we find ourselves grieving for the needless loss of life as a result of the tragic events in Nashville,” Superintendent Matt Gaven said at a Board of Education meeting on April 3.

Concern for student safety remains a top priority for the district, which has been exploring ways to update and modernize its facilities so it is prepared for an active shooter emergency.

“Targeting children and those that serve them is evil. There is no other way to describe it,” Gaven said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Nashville community, and we are so grateful for the heroic efforts of law enforcement for their actions to stop the shooter.”

John Murphy, the district’s assistant superintendent for human resources, gave a presentation in January in which he detailed a variety of upgrades being made in the schools, including the implementation of the Rave Mobile Security app, which he said helped make the facilities safer than they were even two years ago.

The app received a glowing endorsement from Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder last September, for its tools that help law enforcement prevent and respond to threats at schools.

Serving as a panic button of sorts, the app alerts police in the area, who are able to respond to a school significantly faster than after a typical 911 call. Since Rave’s implementation in Rockville Centre schools, many other districts and colleges on Long Island, including Molloy University, have implemented similar systems.

“It’s an evolutionary process,” Murphy told the Herald in January. “The thing about security training is that you can’t say we have everything, because the system changes, and we have to learn to be flexible.”

At the school board meeting earlier this month, Gaven said he had spoken with U.S. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito about efforts to secure additional federal funding for school districts and local governments to enhance cybersecurity and school safety.

With more attention than ever focused on school safety, the administration tried to find ways to reallocate money in the 2023-24 school budget proposal for some common-sense security upgrades.

Robert Bartels, assistant superintendent of finance and operations, said the district anticipated spending $100,000 more than initially planned on legal fees, which they can instead to provide additional funding for security with no change in the budget.

Initially, administrators were considering spending the recouped funds on improved security hardware, but in discussions with the school board, it was suggested that the money would be put to better use by hiring a director of security with a law enforcement background.

“This might be better to coordinate the security districtwide,” Bartels said. “We’ve had issues with substitutes. This person would be able to easily take care of that, as well as issues around school buildings on nights and weekends and over the summer. That’s always a concern we have.”

The proposed spending plan also includes funding for additional shifts for school security guards at South Side Middle School and all five elementary schools.

“Typically we have a security guard at each elementary school,” Bartels explained. “When they finish at the end of the day, that’s usually it. We wanted to make sure there was additional funding for them to have additional security after school and into evening programs as well.”

He added that while South Side High School already has security on duty all night, the plan is to do the same at the middle school when it is used by outside programs.

The preliminary budget hearing was scheduled for Tuesday night, after the Herald went to press, at South Side High. The final budget vote and Board of Education elections will take place on May 16 at the high school.