GUEST COLUMN
By JoAnn Meyer
Last week’s National Safe Schools Week arrived this year with the horror at Lancaster County still fresh in our memories. And maybe that’s not so bad.
For those who believed that school violence, however rare, was still something that happened elsewhere, usually in public high schools and by disaffected teenaged boys, the bloodshed in a one-room Amish schoolhouse the victims all pious, bonneted young girls was mind-numbing. After all, what part of the American landscape could be safer than a one-room schoolhouse in the fertile valleys of Lancaster County?
So what do we do about this? How do we reasonably secure our schools against the threat however unlikely it is of someone who wishes to harm our students or our staff?
Since 1999, when we elevated the issue of school safety in our districtwide planning, we in Hopewell Valley have increasingly strengthened a series of initiatives designed to protect our students.
Crisis response plans, specific to every school and featuring, among other things, lockdown procedures, on-site and off-site evacuation locations and parent notification procedures, are reviewed and updated annually.
Unannounced drills, which we began conducting two years ago, test our staff readiness for different kinds of emergencies. We have run a drill simulating a hazardous material spill at the high school and a bomb threat at the middle school and last year conducted a tabletop drill of a violent intruder at one of our elementary schools. This year we are conducting daytime intruder drills at all schools.
Photo ID cards for all employees and personalized uniforms for all maintenance workers help identify staff.
Visitor sign-in and badges are required protocol for even the most frequent and familiar visitors.
Digital surveillance cameras are fixed on the main entrances and other strategic locations. In schools having more than one camera, such as Central High School and Timberlane Middle School, the cameras are monitored and digital records made.
Camera-ready buses are a condition of our contracts with our busing companies and we include buses in all school drills. We continue our "Cop on the Bus" program in which a police officer rides with the children on routes where drivers have encountered motorists illegally passing their buses. Using a hand-held radio, the officer notifies marked cars in the vicinity to intercept unsafe drivers.
A plainclothes Hopewell Township police officer spends 20 hours a week between Timberlane and CHS, speaking on safety issues and working to build strong youth-police relations. In the elementary schools, the role is served, but on a less frequent and drop-in basis, by officers in the Adopt-A-Cop program.
We joined a national network of 6,000 schools and 100 TV stations, known as the AWS Homeland Security WeatherNet Network, that provides terrorist information as well as severe weather warnings. Partnered with the National Weather Service, the network is an initiative of the Office of Homeland Security.
All of our hand-held radios, district bus radios and maintenance vehicles are programmed to the same frequency, enabling local police to monitor our communications in the event of an emergency.
Wallet-sized cards, specific to each school and detailing how to get information in the event of an emergency, are mailed home annually to parents. The information on the cards, provided free of charge by the local PBA chapter, is also posted on the district Web site.
Our district safety committee, comprised of principals, administrators, a Board of Education member and local police and fire officials, meets regularly to discuss evolving issues and long-term strategies.
Campus safety officers, assigned to each of our six schools, are one of our most important initiatives to date.
Despite our budget’s failure at the polls this year and a $2.1 million reduction by municipal leaders, we held onto a $180,000 line item for the new personnel. Nearly all of our new officers are retired from careers as policemen or firemen and have on-the-job training in emergency response. They have the skills necessary to professionally evaluate our existing crisis plans, troubleshoot small issues before they become big ones, and manage traffic. They have the expertise to spot infrastructure weaknesses so they can be fixed and the skills to help us support our at-risk youth. And they have critical knowledge to share with students, from tips for safe bicycling to the hazards of substance abuse. Some of them are invested, by home and children, in the Hopewell Valley community. At $22,500 per person, these extra sets of trained eyes come at a bargain.
But we are far from done. Tighter security at all of our schools will involve an investment in more efficient hardware. One of the casualties of the past year’s budget process was upgrades at Central High School and Timberlane, which draw a total of some 2,400 students and staff daily and where officials lobbied for a better locking system and more cameras. Because estimates ran over $1 million, this purchase was postponed.
Still, access issues at CHS remain significant. Sheer logistics force many of its 1,223 students to take shortcuts outside the building, and between wings, in order to change classes on time.
The substantial financial costs aside, improving our campus security will be difficult without a change in our Valley culture and attitude. Several parents reacted quickly and angrily to past proposals to hire a full-time police officer at Central High School, concerned that it presented the "wrong" public image. Yet our old, familiar concept of the welcoming neighborhood school where parents and grandparents come and go at will to read to classes and help restock library shelves poses increasing risks to our children at a time when every cracked door represents access to strangers with unknown intentions.
JoAnn Meyer is director of communications/development for the Hopewell Valley Regional School District.

