Carmel School District Addresses Student Safety

With an uptick in school shootings occurring across the nation, school officials in Putnam County continue to evaluate how safe their students are, including Carmel, which discussed ways to better protect them last week.

The discussion took place during last Tuesday’s school board meeting, in which Carmel school chief Andy Irvin explained how the district keeps students safe on a daily basis and its training and planning in preparation for any incident the district might face.

Irvin said there have been multiple additional mandates since 2015, including emergency response training and required drills. Safety plans are put together, but are not available for public view because of obvious safety precautions.

“We cannot and don’t think that we can prepare for every single possibility, but we try to put as many possibilities into our training as possible,” Irvin said.

Irvin said following the Sandy Hook school shooting he had a hard time imagining having armed guards at the doors of elementary schools. But this year’s budget would include Special Patrol Officers (SPO) for each elementary and primary school, Irvin said. An SPO is less expensive than a School Resource Officer (SRO), Irvin said, because an SPO is retired law enforcement. An SRO is part of the sheriff’s department and one of each is at the high school and middle school.

Irvin said visitors are not allowed to enter any school building unless it is the main entrance or in the high school’s case, the library entrance or front of the building. There is a project to build fencing around the perimeter of school campuses to keep students safe when they are outside during activities like recess, he said. A computer program has also been implemented to detect if certain words are typed into a school computer, like “bomb,” Irvin said.

Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES safety coordinator Frank Guglieri said at the meeting the state passed down safety mandates in response to other school shootings that have occurred in the country in recent years. Guglieri lauded Carmel for taking additional training and planning steps to buff up its safety.

“Safety today is not safety five years ago,” Guglieri said.

In the next couple of years, the state will likely mandate threat assessment training, Guglieri said, though BOCES has already held a workshop regarding that subject. Situational awareness was also being tackled by Carmel, even before the Parkland, FL. school shooting that left 17 staff members and students dead in February, Guglieri said.

“If I had kids would I send them here,” Guglieri said. “Yes, I would. Not only educationally, but from a safety standpoint.”

Sheriff ’s office Sergeant Michael Szabo, who is the SRO supervisor, said Putnam is ahead of curve when it comes to armed guards attending schools within the county, with training for SROs and SPOs

He said recently there was a situation where it was believed a gun was brought into a school and in less than two minutes an officer on the campus was at the location of the possible incident. Luckily, it was not a real threat, Szabo said.

“I don’t want somebody responding to my kids’ school if there was an incident that’s five minutes away,” he said. “I want them there.”

Parents also offered their input, with many of them urging the district to do even more.

Parent Jennifer Lambert, who has two children in the district, said her daughters suggested they need better places to hide in the event of a shooting. Lambert mentioned bulletproof glass windows, metal detectors, and other security measures. She noted parent organizations could hold fundraisers to pay for the extra security.

“We need our children alive,” Lambert said. “And not shot.”

Parent Vincenzo Albanese, who has one daughter in kindergarten and younger children that’ll enter the school system in a few years, said he would like an officer assigned to every school in order to respond to a threat right away.

“I don’t want to hear the word budget used in the same sentence (as safety),” Albanese said.

Another parent, Amy Conroy of Kent, suggested a more robust mental health program for the district. She said the hope is to catch problems with troubled students before an incident occurs.

Parent Alison Hooten said she’d be willing to fundraise to improve the safety of the school.

“I know this community and (parent- teacher organizations) will get it done for you,” Hooten said.

Irvin encouraged parents to have a family emergency plan in place and said the district will continue to communicate with parents as well as possible, especially in the event of an emergency. Irvin said the school district must balance creating safe buildings with proper codes and compliances.

“We don’t stop with our ongoing training and drills,” Irvin said.