KINGSTON, N.Y. — School district officials said that proposed updates to the districtwide safety plan include keeping personnel in sync during crisis situations while making it easier for responding agencies to navigate the campuses.
The proposed plan and the current plan can be found at https://www.kingstoncityschools.org/departments/school-safety and will be subject to a 7 p.m. July 8 public hearing.
Following a Wednesday, June 3, Board of Education presentation, district Safety Coordinator LeShawn Parker said some of the most meaningful solutions are those that appear to be most simple.
“We largely completed our door numbering campaign for the school district, with (Kingston High School) not quite finished,” he said.
“It sounds like such a simple little thing but it took forever to… coordinate all the district buildings to have the same door convention and numbering convention at every school in the same exact way,” Parker said. “(10 years ago) everything was out of whack, and when I would read the blueprints…it was, like, is something wrong? None of it was corresponding to the hallway number and the doorway number.”
The simple changes for 11 buildings are accompanied by other changes. Police and other emergency responders are to be provided with an electronic access codes instead of access cards.
“The problem…was the cards would get lost in somebody’s car in the seat or the glove compartment and we had to reissue new cards all the time, which I don’t like to do,” he said. “We changed all the main doors to digital combination. Now if there’s a lockdown or an emergency, 911 has that code and nobody has to rip anything out to get in.”
There are also protocol differences intended to alert teachers, staff, and students to the start and end of emergency events.
“In just the past year we went from (having) everything announced on the PA (public address system) and then we would hit the button to this year we went to just hitting the button, everybody locking down, then the police coming in and unlocking every door,” Parker said.
“We did that for every school this year except for the high school, which is scheduled for…next year,” he said. “That’s an accomplishment because all the police departments are actually coming in and learning the floor plan…They go to every door, give a little speech (saying) ‘I’m now using my key to enter your room, there is no danger, the lockdown is over.’”
Parker said there has also been an emphasis in having staff become familiar with emergency protocols established by school resource officers.
“We basically challenged (officers) to…train all the guards and the monitors districtwide,” he said.
The work includes having the resource officers provide information about handling specific circumstances that may arise.
“This was the first time we put them in charge of actually taking a lead position with our safety staff,” Parker said. “We’ve got them training with these folks.”
