Education Leader and Security Professional

A small-town superintendent asks: Since when did these two job titles become synonymous?

One day after the deadly shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February, I walked into the tiny school district that I lead in the Catskill region of upstate New York with an eye to do everything possible to prevent that violence from occurring here.

The question was what to do next. That remains challenging as my academic degrees, certifications and training all revolve around teaching and learning and leading others in educating young people. It’s not in the fields of safety and security. Yet for much of the past year, I’ve been on a mission to learn and to act in ways that would protect the 372 students and the 102 staff members who make up the Hunter Tannersville Central School District.

Facility Fixes

The perplexity of it all is captured in every decision about keeping students safe. Consider the use of lockdown procedures. I recognized that this protocol seeks to keep students and staff in locked classrooms during a crisis in or near a school. But with glass comprising a third of the doors in our aging schools, built in 1935, students were not necessarily going to be safe staying put.

Two evenings later after the Parkland shootings, at a regularly scheduled meeting of the board of education, I proposed a capital renovation project in which every classroom door in each building would be replaced with solid-core doors with the minimum glass window required by state regulation. Additionally, all major windows facing interior hallways were to be covered in state-of-the-art bullet-resistant film.

Last Sept. 25, our community overwhelmingly approved (by a 150-9 count) a ballot measure to proceed with the $250 million project to add another layer of safety for our students. Had Parkland not happened, this project would never have been proposed. It is reactionary only in that it took an atrocity elsewhere for me to see that a lockdown in my district’s schools would not protect the students or staff. I am learning on the job as fast as I can.

Search for Solutions

As a school administrator, I completed a plethora of graduate-level coursework to ensure competence leading a school building and district. Educational law drove home the point that school district leaders must ensure the safety and well-being of all students, staff and employees who work under our leadership.

With each school shooting and crisis threat resulting in a building lockdown taking place across the country, I empathized with the superintendents of these schools and their administrative colleagues. The weight that bears down on them when students and staff have their lives in jeopardy is overwhelming. Simultaneously, I begin thinking about what action is needed to prevent that situation from happening here.

No resources exist on our state education department website and neither do solutions appear in the leadership literature to assist us in the search for prevention. Rather, I have had to take action on my own, scouring the internet for research, podcasts, webinars and professional conferences. I’ve spoken with the local police agency and state troopers, and their advice has proven to be the most powerful and applicable.

Police Counsel

A New York state trooper who attended the open house of the newly built, state-of-the-art Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut shared valuable information with our school district on safety and prevention implementation. I have since acted on his advice:

• Keep classroom doors closed and locked at all times. This may be an inconvenience, but research shows there is a loss of fine motor skills during a traumatic event so a teacher may struggle to lock the door quickly.
  
• Monitor a single point of entry for each building — with no exceptions. This requires a safety vestibule. No one should have access to the school building unless a locked door is opened after the visitor has been vetted.
• Schedule regular active shooter trainings for staff in each building. Actions need to become habit just like our fire drills.
  

After conducting our first active shooter training last summer, one of the teachers said, “You know, we practice these lockdown drills all the time. I review the stuff with my students, and I’ve been known to complain that we need to spend more time on academics than this stuff. Today my perspective changed, and this wasn’t even real. Having to actually put into place what we discuss was nerve-wracking. We need to do this every year, and we need to do it in each building.”

He is one of many school staff members that day who learned how paralyzing the fear can be in the midst of a traumatic event — and this wasn’t even real.

Realistic Simulation

In spite of the lack of resources and personal training, school administrators will do everything and anything within our power to protect every student and staff member. I know this is true for me. Yet during our active shooter training, one teacher was “shot” and lay on the floor in the hallway calling for help. Our training says to keep every locked door closed and to move children away from the line of sight. As the teacher lay “wounded” in the hallway calling for someone to help, another teacher opened the door to assist. The “shooter” at that point claimed another victim. That teacher was mortified. “I was only trying to help,” she said.

This is not an uncommon act as teachers by nature are caring, empathetic and willing to help others. Sadly, we must institute and maintain a new normal where your concern is for those in your immediate care only. At first glance, this goes against the grain of being an educator, but today it is a necessity.

My knowledge of school safety and security grows daily, unfortunately at the expense of academic matters. When developing the district budget, I would love to allocate money to hire literacy teachers to ensure our students are reading at grade level by 3rd grade and to hire job coaches to help high school students who may not be seeking a collegiate path. Instead, any funding that becomes available will help with constructing a security vestibule in both of our school buildings and to fund the hiring of a school resource officer. There are no aid revenues for these actions that are intended to help save lives nor is there assistance from the state or federal governments.

A Step Ahead

I became an educator to enrich lives and facilitate learning. I did not enter education to serve as a peace officer or security guard, yet I am spending time learning to be proactive to prevent a need to deal with reactive measures in the case of a violent act. Monday morning quarterbacks question and mock decisions I make as superintendent. I realize I am only one page ahead of them in understanding what to do, and even with that, what I do depends on the authorship of the paper I’ve read or the security professional I’ve spoken with.

In a perfect world, there would be formal training on security matters for all school leaders. Currently, such training comes from a variety of agencies and organizations in a scattered manner with little to no cohesiveness. No classes in safety and security are offered those entering the administrative ranks beyond what’s referenced in education law.

We may be well-versed in teaching and learning pedagogy for the effective 21st-century classroom. However, we now face an equal expectation to be our schools’ lead security professional.

Well-organized training, supported by federal and state agencies and coordinated with local policing agencies as well as state and federal militia would go a long way to address our limited knowledge and skill sets. We need to use the same language, protocols and training and hold the same expectations to the greatest extent possible.

Until that training and support arrives, we will practice all sorts of drills and talk about school safety as if there were no other help because, as educators, we believe in protecting the lives that we are charged with teaching.