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As parents prepare to send their children back to school later this month, area school officials have strived to ensure a safe environment in which to learn.
Measures range from a police presence in the schools to new safety locks capable of providing a barricade in an emergency to ALICE training, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
South Williamsport Area School District formed a school safety committee over the past year after state police completed a vulnerability and risk assessment.
"It was always our intent to put together a safety committee, but we were waiting on an external assessment so the committee had solid evidence and information to use," said Dr. Mark Stamm, South Williamsport Area School District superintendent.
The committee meets monthly and consists of faculty, custodial and support staff, district administration, the South Williamsport police chief, three school board members, community representatives and the superintendent.
"It's a big committee," Stamm said. "We've covered everything from facility security, student safety, network security and any topic that relates to safety and security of schools … because first and foremost, a safe and secure environment is more important than anything else we do. If kids don't feel safe, they can't learn."
One result of the safety committee was the decision to add a school resource officer to the district. The officer, who is a full-time South Williamsport Area police officer, will start in September.
East Lycoming School District had school security in mind when it redesigned and changed the location of its high school office last summer.
Central concern
"Previously, our high school office was located right in the center of the school," said Michael Pawlik, East Lycoming superintendent. "It created a concern for us because … people had to walk through the school to get to the office … we had no way of controlling where they went."
Now that is no longer the case.
"Visitors enter the building, and they are located right at the office," he said. "It's a double locking system to get into the office."
East Lycoming also has an agreement with the Hughesville Borough police to have an officer stationed at the district all day.
New safety locks were installed in many of the district's doors that act like barricade locks, and Muncy School District also has those locks.
"It's called a nightlock," said Dr. Craig Skaluba, superintendent of Muncy School District. "There's a plate at the bottom of the door, and it just goes in. So we do that … but we can also barricade it too to be able to provide as much protection as we possibly can."
He said the design is made so that it prevents intruders from breaking down doors in the case of a lockdown.
Muncy has had a school resource officer since 2016, and Skaluba said it's important for all districts to keep up-to-date in drills.
"We're proactive in doing many types of drills, not just those types (intruder) of drills, but also evacuation drills and going through the process of how we might do that if something were to happen," he said. "We knock on wood every time. I think it's every superintendent's worse nightmare … and everyone's worst nightmare. We want to keep our kids safe and secure."
He said the district also has administrative meetings once a month to discuss district issues, and many times, safety is a main topic.
"As we go through, we try to identify other areas in our discussions that we could be better or we could improve," he said.
Dr. Ken Dady, Jersey Shore Area School District assistant superintendent, said repeatedly doing drills is important. He said he was told that there hasn't been a fatality in a school fire since the 1950s, and he believes that is due to how trained and prepared officials have become in anticipating what to do in those scenarios.
"It's important to be prepared. As unfortunate as it may be … we need to practice those things in a lot of those other areas related to safety like intruders and things like that so that the kids are well prepared for a crisis," he said.
"We have plans moving forward next year to do a full-blown intruder drill at one of our buildings," said Dr. Jill Wenrich, Jersey Shore Area School District superintendent. "Each year, we'll try to rotate it so that each building may experience what it looks like, sounds like and feels like."
She said the district also has a school resource officer.
"They're here pretty much on a regular basis. Before and after school hours, we do have security personnel on the front door," she said. "Obviously, if we ever have a reported incident we need to assess, we do exactly that. We assess the incident and determine, 'Okay, are the things we already have in place good enough or do we have to add measures to keep our kids safe?' "
Many school districts, including Jersey Shore, are providing staff with ALICE training.
What about ALICE?
"Before (ALICE), in my opinion, it was more dangerous before because if an intruder knew what we were doing, or that schools went into a lockdown, they would know where all the students would be, just somewhere in a room somewhere hunkered down," Dady said. "Now, it's unpredictable for an intruder."
"I think most school districts have chosen to go with ALICE because it gives districts and teachers options versus the only option which was originally introduced when all the safety concerns came from Columbine, etc. It was always hunker down in your classroom," Wenrich said. "ALICE gives you options, and that's why most districts have gone with the ALICE training."
Wenrich said with the training, staff can choose whatever is the best, safest avenue during any given time or circumstance.
Loyalsock Township School District used to have a school resource officer but has since established its own school police officer program.
"This school year, we had an officer on duty to cover the campus each and every school day. Our board supported increasing our officer presence this spring, and we plan to have a school police officer at the elementary school and one at the secondary campus for the next school year," said Gerald L. McLaughlin, Loyalsock Township School District superintendent. "Also, we have a school police officer at our athletic events who is responsible for coordinating our safety and security efforts at this time."
He said the district feels that having school police officers provides the students, staff and parents the best protection.
Loyalsock Township also has a Safe Schools Planning Team that is compromised of school administrators and volunteers that include board members, township officials, school police officers, state police, emergency management officials, fire department personnel, community members, emergency and safety planning personnel from Pennsylvania College of Technology.
Regular meetings
"We meet on a monthly basis to review issues and concerns as well as to plan for emergency drills to train our staff and students," McLaughlin said.
He said the district has continued to install security cameras with the goal of covering as much of the campus as possible.
"We have worked with our team to identify any areas of concern that need monitoring, and we have been proactive in our approach," he said. "We have recently spent time analyzing our school entrances to see how we can improve our traffic flow as well as improve the safety at each building. Plans are to provide recommendations and cost estimates to our facilities committee in the near future."
Representatives from Montoursville Area School District and Montgomery Area School District could not be reached as of press time.
Tim Bowers, superintendent of Williamsport Area School District, declined to comment.