001Welcome to the party. >> Glad to be here. >> Okay, we're going to call the uh public hearing to uh order. I'll turn it over to Mrs. Fox, our superintendent. >> So, we're here for public hearing on the districtwide safety plan. So, I want to thank everybody for being here tonight. As you know, one of our highest priorities as a school district is ensuring the safety and well-being of our students, staff, and community members. Each year, as required by the New York State SAVE legislation, we review, and update our district-wide safety plan. The plan outlines how we prevent, respond to, and recover from a wide range of emergencies. They're all listed in the plan, from natural disasters to medical situations to threats of violence. It's linked to the detailed building level emergency response plans, but
002those response plans are uh private for security reasons, but they do ensure that each school is fully prepared. Um, so tonight's hearing is part of our public comment process. Uh, we welcome public comment. We've had our plan on our website for over a month. Uh, I have not received any comments to date, written comments. Um, but I encourage you if you're here for the plan tonight that uh you would step up and introduce yourself and share your comments. We would love to have be part of that conversation. >> Come right forward if you don't mind. >> Excuse me. >> Yeah, that's okay. >> I'm Kimberly Bford and I just Hi. I just recently became aware of the safety plan and um I haven't been able to review it. That's why I was trying to log
003into my phone, but so I'm a little bit behind the eightball, but at least I got here for the meeting. So, I'm sorry I'm not first on it. I just found out about >> That's okay. Did you get online? Are you all set for that? >> No, because your security uh people, the guest security, they wouldn't allow me to have the Wi-Fi. I do have a a printed copy so I can I can save you. Thank you. >> That is no problem. >> You got it. >> Do you want a minute just to review that? >> Sure. >> Just review that and come back and speak. >> We're going to be here for another 10 minutes anyway. >> Just want to come back and ask questions. >> Okay. >> We'll take your questions. Is there
004anyone else who would like to ask a question? >> Hey, Zach. >> The plan's reviewed uh and updated as needed and it gets formally adopted by the board each year. Um and then we submit copies of that plan to the New York State Education Department, the local emergency services and law enforcement. It identifies potential internal and external hazards such as the natural disasters, intruders, medical emergencies, hazardous material spills, all that type of thing. It does uh rely on an incident command system. I'm the superintendent. As the superintendent, I'm the commander. Um and then building leaders take uh command for their building level incident incidents. And then um just as when I'm not here, I always say whoever has it is in charge of it. and everybody else's job is to support as needed. So, district
005resources, staff, facilities, equipment are committed as needed. Um, we also have to do annual multi-hazard training for staff and students, including fire and evacuation. Everybody loves the infamous um spill uh issues and bloodborne pathology training. Um, we do fire and evacuation drills, lockdown drills. Uh, in fact, our um our drill is coming up in October for our emergency response where we actually practice evacuating the buildings. Um, we have emergency responders who walk our buildings daily and are good local resource. We also do a lot of work with deescalation, conflict resolution, awareness of suspicious behavior and violence prevention. So, we have a lot of policies in our policy manual that touch on different pieces of this. Um, and we have a lot of policies and procedures districtwide about exterior doors are locked. Staff have swipe card
006access. Visitors have to be buzzed in, sign in, and wear ID. Our schools and buses are equipped with camera systems. And what a lot of people don't know is that on the buses it also can pick up um it can it can pick up the conversation also. So it's both um audio. It's audio and video. >> Am I correct on that? That all buses now have more than one camera. >> Yes. And multiple cameras. >> Back in the day it was just the one and now we have >> multiple cameras. Yes. So we do have a ton of two-way radios to improve communication both in a building and among our buildings. and parents and guardians are contacted in emergencies during parent using parents wear. We've been using that now for a few years. Everybody's pretty
007used to that, comfortable with it. Uh we do sometimes notify neighboring schools and colleges if it's something that um we think could affect them. And um we do have contact information everywhere except in by all our phones, all of our our plans for our key emergency partners. So, you know, the safety of our students we talk about every year, multiple times a year. We don't take it for granted. And so, we appreciate anybody who does want to review it and have some comments on our safety plan. So, please don't be shy about sharing them. Um, the plan's been open for 30 days, which is the requirement. It's been open for over that. We posted August 18th. Uh, I anticipate that the board will formally adopt the plan this evening, but I I do want to
008emphasize that the work is ongoing as things change, as things come on like our our new facility, um, we need to constantly be updating our plan. So, we are happy to have input at any time. Even though we have a public comment period, doesn't mean that if you are here at an event or you think of something or see something cool at somebody else's school district, uh I'm always happy to hear about that. A plan can be updated at any point during the year. So that we're all working towards the same goal and that's that our schools are safe and u doesn't take much to see the news that um it takes all of us to make sure that that happens on a daily basis. So thank you for your participation and uh for your
009commitment. >> Would anyone from the audience like to comment ask questions? So, we got five more minutes, Miss Jerry. We'll wait. If you think of something you want to ask, let us know. We'll do our best. I've just been like moving through. Yeah. Yeah. >> Tweaks a little experience. You got a >> Saturday. That's great. >> Thank you. I'm sorry that I'm not prepared. and Diane, thank you for giving me the copy. So, I cruised to it really fast and maybe I overlooked it, but um is there anybody inside our schools that has been trained um with security with um firearms like a police officer to be in the schools to be there during the day while the children are in class and the teachers are teaching. >> We do not have a safety officer.
010Some schools have a safe different labels for a similar role of what you're discussing. So our district does not have a safety officer. >> Would that be something you guys would be willing to discuss about the future? >> We have discussed it. >> We've discussed it. We've actually uh you know that's that's an ongoing topic. One thing to note though, I'm sure Diane will support this is our local police do many cruise rooms and building walkthroughs as do the state police. >> So you know it's guardian here constantly. No, but uh they do make their presence known in our campus and our building at our extracurricular event. So there is a presence of sort. >> That's good. And do we have any statistics? Um does anybody know of any statistics where if a safety officer
011is present in the school that an incident is lower or >> um >> yeah I mean I I can't quote this off the top of my head. Um Justin Garwood who's not here today actually teaches a whole class on this at UVM. He's like one of the nation's experts on school shootings and school safety. The research that I've seen shows that it's not actually that effective that that the presence of a school safety officer often does not make much of a difference. >> Okay. So I could reach out to him to get >> Yeah, he would he would be a good person to ask and he he knows that research really really well and so we off he can rattle it off the top of his head and speak to it with more authority than
012I can as as somebody who's only vaguely familiar with it. But there's a cost involved with it as well. Um that's quite significant. >> The last roadblock we ran into was availability of a person to do it. >> That was also the issue which and I think Tupper Lake just had this problem as well. So our last conversation about this centered around um it can't be just a person, it's got to be the right person. And just a person might not be helpful if it isn't the right person for that job. It's kind of a unique thing to do. Um and and just to recap one of our last discussions, typical law enforcement training um does not address the kind of skills you need and work with adolescence in school environment. So that person really
013needs to have the law enforcement background but some other skills as well. Um and so that's where we left it the last time trying to decide if we could find such a person. We're always open to any of those suggestions. >> I know the hospital's event look at that too. And I've always advocated for the local hospital because it was their policy to just have doctors and staff show up, you know, which, you know, if I was a doctor eight years, 10 years of medical, you know, you're risking you're I won't go there. >> Yeah. You understand? >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay, we'll end the uh public hearing. >> We have a newest member. Are you here to speak about the public hearing on the safety plan? >> I'm just
014here to listen. >> Okay, beautiful. Didn't want to shut you out. >> Appreciate it. Okay. So, we'll end that and we'll call to order the September 25th, 2025 uh board of education meeting and stand for Can we pause on that? I got a