001Testing, testing. >> Mhm. Mhm. >> Hello everyone. Welcome to our night board of education I'm Phil D'Amico president of the board of education. Would everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance. All right, good evening everybody. First thank you to the board of education central office not only for the opportunity to speak tonight but for all your support over the past four years for a program that has led to all of us dressing alike this evening. For those of you who don't know me my name's Charlie Rizzuto. I'm one of the assistant principals at Islip High School. Tonight I'm going to share with you a little bit about the One Love organization and how it has supported students here at Islip. One Love is an organization dedicated to the memory of Yeardley Love who lost
002her life after experiencing an abusive relationship. The organization aims to educate all people about relationship health an issue that impacts far too many young people but is not discussed nearly enough. This year on March 12th our 9th and 10th graders engaged in small group workshops facilitated by trained Islip staff members where they learned the 10 signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships what the cycle of abuse may look like and the three tiers of the three P's of support parents or guardians peers and profes- uh professionals or trusted adults. Feedback from this year's workshop was the most insightful and eye-opening to date. Students asked specific thought-provoking questions thanked us for bringing this much-needed learning experience to them and even asked for more experiences like this one in the future. At the end of the day I
003received an email from one of our teacher facilitators who told me that at the end of the day some juniors and seniors who had experienced this program some years before came up to her and asked if we could bring something back for their grade levels again. I want to thank the faculty and staff who dedicated their time to receive the training to create these invaluable learning experiences for our students as well as the countless other member members of our faculty that sacrificed some instructional time to support this program. Lastly as a reminder to everybody in the audience or maybe listening at home if anybody needs resources or support feel free to reach out to the main office at your respective school buildings to be put in touch with someone to provide that guidance. Thank you.
004>> [applause] >> Sure um I think we're we're going to leave the table and sit in the audience but just to tell uh those in attendance there'll be a three-part presentation this this evening related to school safety and security and then following that a budget presentation uh from Mrs. Brown. Uh for our security presentation first will be Mr. Byrne who is our um security advisor and then will be uh special agent Craig Minsky from the FBI who will um talk to us about identifying just safety in general and and school violence uh how to prevent it and things that go into that. Then I will share um the data from multiple surveys that we did and then a discussion period I think and then Mrs. Brown's presentation after >> [cough] [clears throat] >> All right,
005good evening everybody. Good evening. Can you hear me? Hi Peters. For those of you that don't know me my name is uh Rob Byrne. I am the covert in-house security consultant for Islip School District. Uh just a little bit on my background um I was a 20-year uh member of the NYPD. Uh I retired out of the intelligence bureau uh working uh terrorist cases. I transitioned into school security. Uh prior to coming to Islip I worked at Nassau County District five years. Uh and then got a little closer to home and for the last year and a half now I've been working here in Islip. I apologize for a little redundancy if anyone was at our November uh safety forum this is uh a abbreviated version of what we talked about that night. Uh Dr.
006O'Hara asked us to recap and provide some fresh information for the community. Um so just to start real quick uh our security staff here is is phenomenal. Uh we have 31 guards. Out of those 31 30 are active or retired law enforcement. Uh we still have two active members of law enforcement. One of which uh is an Islip graduate. Um she's a supervisor for her department. She has SRO experience so she's been a great asset. She's working for the AM for us. Hopefully we'll be able to get her up uh here full time when she decides to retire. Uh we have a really nice blend of uh NYPD, Nassau PD, Suffolk PD and besides that um all of our guards kind of have a rooted interest in Islip as security. They either live here or
007have kids that went to school here other relatives here graduates here. So they're they're not just flying in that really don't care. They're giving a They care. They take care about the kids. They care about the community. I know over's been here about uh 10 years or so. Um I think there's been a lot of sweeping changes over the years and and some people that have been in the district a long time with security the board Dr. O'Hara the central administration um security is a priority. Coming from another district seeing uh Islip I can tell you that it's security is is top notch here. It is it is really good. Um you can see the picture up there of the command center. That was uh about two years ago before I got here. That's monitored
008we can access all cameras throughout the district. We can see all the schools. Suffolk County PD in case of emergency has a uh If you have an with us they can jump in in the app, to view our cameras if there is an emergency going on. Guard booths, as you can see that was installed a few years ago. We have really tight campus security. We do locker checks, main street, so we know who's coming in and out of this campus all time during the day. We have a robust staff. Our communication [clears throat] We have multi-levels here. Radios, every guard has a radio. We're working with Mrs. Brown to possibly get some new digital radios. I know that's been a concern. I think we're really close and we're having some meetings to get that done.
009The Ring [clears throat] app, if you can see that cell phone image up there. All security is equipped with that on their cell phones and staff also has an option to have that installed on their phone. That's a Motorola app that is free. That is geo-coded with all our schools. Uh So, if I was to hit any of those buttons, Suffolk County PD is getting an immediate alert to their cell phones. All police officers carry a department issued phone. Uh it will tell them within 20 ft of who set that off and where they are. You can call for fire, call for an ambulance. Or as you see on the top, that's that's for an active shooter incident. We also [clears throat] have the backbone. I probably just uh aged myself there for those that
010used to watch Batman back in the day. That red phone, there's a couple in every school. Uh person to pick up that phone, that goes right to the supervisor at Suffolk County Police Department. Um they immediately know there's an emergency in the school. They know what school it's coming from. Again, that immediately comes to dispatch in the area. That's the safe hotline. Uh >> [clears throat] >> recently with uh Dr. Haws' approval, another uh low-cost items in the district. I worked with Suffolk PD. Uh we put some additional strategically placed some boxes around the district that had some hard keys to expedite our response to help police get in. They need to get into our buildings. Supervisors have card swipes. Our SROs have card swipes and most guards also have card swipes. Most card swipes
011can work even if they're turned off. The card swipes so they can always get into our building in case of an emergency. Uh we just went a step further that God forbid those cars were ever tied up on some other emergency, somebody showed up, didn't have a card swipe. This uh new boxes we put up, uh worked with their communications department, typed up a little info sheet. Anytime a police officer pulls up to a job at a school, it immediately will come up on their computer instructions where the box is, the code to open the box, and there's a card swipe and a master key in there for them to get into the building in case they don't have the card swipe in their car. Uh [clears throat] additionally, we utilize an app for security
012that I use for scheduling. But it's also it's another way for me to contact guards in real time. If we have an incident where somebody we just don't want them on campus, I can type out a little message and all the guards will see it, you know, so-and-so is not allowed on any any campus right now. I can put a picture. So, it's just another great layer that we have to be able to communicate with each other. Our drills, we have a we have a really great relationship with like I said, the SRO, their precinct. The police are at most of our drills. So, you see them there helping us get into the different vantage points. Dr. Haws has always encouraged the principals to do these drills during off hours, changing the periods, with kids
013out at lunch, kids in the cafeteria, just to practice different times. Just you can never be you can be too prepared. Uh situational awareness, we're constantly giving PDP to staff, which is going to lead into Mr. P's presentation. Why I'm kind of giving a really condensed down version tonight. It's a super important topic. That topic is really it's I don't know how to put it, but it is fundamental. The staff it's a it's a team effort in what he's going to speak about. We can't do it alone. Parents, community, coaches all communicate together and speak and pick up on some of these warning signs that he's going to speak about. Uh our camera system is pretty robust. We've had some meetings recently, some smart phone meetings. We're looking to add some additional cameras. Sat down
014with principals and we mapped out some additional places to further cover our district to do an upgrade to camera systems. Um I'm always walking buildings looking for vulnerabilities. Looking for threat assessments, liability issues. I will say coming from a different district, one of the cheapest and most effective tools for security is working behind a closed locked door. This district does an phenomenal job. I know the community is not walking our schools while kids are in session, but if you walk our hallways while kids are here, you'll rarely see a door open. Everyone is behind a closed locked door. Teaching and instruction space, it's it's not the most convenient setup, but the staff has really bought in here. They're doing an outstanding job. And [clears throat] then of course, like I said, we're going over the
015smart bond stuff. We're we're trying to also be fiscally responsible. But we're responsible, so we're not looking at looking at getting some new cameras, but we also have some old [laughter] cameras that we can not throw out, but move to a different area that's not covered and still get some additional use. And then we'll replace those with other new cameras. >> [clears throat] >> We're constantly giving professional development, additional training for the guards. As you can see back there, de-escalation, CPI training. AED and stuff that we have done a few times. I will say Iceland and Daniel's law became a hot topic that was recently where we have to have cardiac plans in our building emergency response. Here in our district, we have over 100 staff members who are well over 100 staff members who
016are CPR and AED trained. For a district that size, we're well ahead of the curve. We have a large amount of staff who are CPR and AED trained. >> [clears throat] >> All our security personnel gets 8 hour training for October every year. We go over all the topics, de-escalation, >> [cough] >> AED refreshers for security. >> [clears throat] >> And then we did a table top assembly about a year ago. Suffolk PD came and worked with all our administrators. Going over scenarios, topics. It's great collaboration. They point out things to us that we don't notice. We point out things that they don't notice. Again, we have a great relationship with Suffolk PD and we have a great relationship with our fire department. Pretty much sums up our quick little presentation for tonight. Uh do
017you have any questions, concerns? I'll turn it over to Greg. I want to thank It's actually >> [cough] >> how fast the location is really important. Yeah. So, if again, if I hit that active shooter button on top and I'm right here on my phone, within 15 seconds, it's going right to the police officers' cell phones. They know right where that is. It creates almost like an amber alert type of noise on your phone. They're coming. Cavalry is coming. Uh it gives me the opportunity, if I'm the one who hits it, I can talk with dispatch. But if I'm in a situation where I don't feel comfortable talking, I don't want to remain silent, they'll say hello, hello, hello. If I don't answer by the third time, they'll start texting. Uh so, it's it's great
018app, free. We encourage staff. We're constantly adding to it. It's it's it's fantastic. You said it was accurate to 20 ft? By 20 ft. So, you know, sometimes if security is on that back baseball field and a kid breaks his leg or has a serious injury, we want to get in and they're trying to describe the exact location where you want a police officer to go. It's pretty tough if you're a couple of ways behind. Oh yeah, we're over the footbridge behind the turf. But if you hit the app, they're going to they're going to see it's on the geo-fence. It's pretty impressive how this all works. Yeah, and it's it's owned by Motorola, so it's it's high quality and that yeah, it's not going anywhere. They're they're adding more tools to it and it's
019getting more and more developed. Great, thank you. Following up on this question, when that app is initiated, what tends to be the average response time for the Suffolk County Police Department to respond? It kind of depends really on what's going on on the day. I mean, there could be a car getting gas at 7-Eleven or a cup of coffee and could be here less than 20 seconds. I don't know if how many people have actually had to use this for the for the the bed app part of it. I think we used it for the medic and ambulance was here in 2 minutes. Try to I don't really want to have to hit the yellow. Knock on wood. Thank you. As far as testing or drills, how often are those done? Uh there's a state
020mandate. Uh you have to do four lockdown drills a year and eight fire evacuations. >> [clears throat] >> Are you using this app during these drills? You can now. Uh we haven't done it yet, but Motorola did at the beginning of the year just put in a drill feature that kind of cuts the police out, but lets you hit the button in test mode and staff will get the message as if Mayday was an issue. And uh prior to this advances, we didn't we hadn't tested it, but we hadn't notified the police. Right. I usually will go around in the summer testing it. uh have to pull up communications. I'll hit it. They'll say, "I you know, I'm getting feedback for high school. You looks like you're in the Southwest wing." I'll just confirm that
021and drop it. We just get the schools and do that once a year and we also test the safe phones once a >> [clears throat] [applause] >> All right. Hi, everybody. Um my name's Greg Neski. I'm an agent with the FBI here in New York. And I my office is in Melville, so I am a Long Island agent and I am a member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I'm a coordinator for the BAU and I sit on the Nassau County and Suffolk County Threat Advisory Committee. So, what we do is um any [clears throat] threat that comes in that gets elevated to that level where the county police, both Nassau and county Nassau and Suffolk are involved, I will be part of those threat assessment cases. Um so, what I'm going to talk about here
022tonight is pretty much what the community needs to know as far as what to look for, what to do, what to be aware of when it comes to somebody who might be traveling down a dangerous path um towards targeted violence. And the significance of this and why it matters, uh three examples here. First one was a church, second was a restaurant, and the third was uh an elementary school. But ultimately, uh three horrific events and numerous people in each event knew something was up. They knew that somebody was going through something where they were exhibiting these signs, these warning behaviors, um these concerning behaviors, and nobody raised that concern. Nobody, you know, told called the police, nobody told the school administrator, and unfortunately, these these horrific events actually happened. So, what what we're trying to
023do, the FBI, local police, we're trying to get out, give presentations like this to the community, so everybody knows what these warning signs are, what these risk factors are, so that way you all as a community you know what to do, what to look for, and how to handle them. Um you know, these mass shootings, these these attacks, these and not necessarily just shootings, right? We should call it targeted violence attacks because it's not always a gun. People sometimes do this with knives, people are using vehicles for these attacks now sometimes. But ultimately, these attackers don't snap. They don't wake up one day because they had a bad prior day. This is a process that they go through. So, you know, they have a long Some of these processes are long. It's years in the
024making. So, because of that, because it takes a while for them to get to that point, many times there are these behaviors that are exhibited that are forward-facing, people can see, and the community can recognize. Um and this is one tool that we use, but it's also important for you all to use in the community. Uh it's called the Pathways to Intended Violence. And researchers have gone through this pathway, uh compared it to, you know, prior attackers and looked at assassins, and ultimately at the end of the day, many attackers actually follow this pathway. Um and the significance is that most often, very often, these these persons of concern start with a grievance. And the grievance can be real, it could be something that actually happened to them, um or it could be perceived. It
025could be entirely in their head. It might be something that you and I wouldn't necessarily think of as a grievance that you hang on to, but to them, they can't get over it. So, to deal with it, they have violent ideations, right? They think about dealing with this grievance in a violent way, right? It suits them, makes them feel better. Um but at this point, steps one and two, it's just thought. They haven't taken any action, they haven't gone out and done anything um to actually, you know, move towards an attack other than thinking about it. And this is where ideally we in, you know, as a coordinator for the BAU or working with the local police, this is where we want to intervene. This is where we want you all the community to tell
026us that you have somebody that's exhibiting these behaviors because when we intervene in the early stages, that most often gives us the opportunity to get them on the right path early on. Um you know, I I always use the example of the waterfall where we don't want to try to rescue somebody after they've fallen in and they're underneath the waterfall. It's very difficult to rescue somebody from a river in that situation. We want to rescue them upstream before they even fall in, right? And that's where grievance and ideation are. Now, if they get beyond the ideation phase and they turn to research and planning, this is where they start looking up prior attackers, um they look up weapons, they look up facilities and locations that they may consider attacking. Um this is, you know, now
027they've taken over that act, right? They've started to move in that direction. Next is preparation where they, you know, look up weapons, they start buying these weapons, they start buying the the tools necessary for the attack. Next is breach, and breach isn't necessarily just the day of the attack, but it could be uh in the lead-up to the attack where if they go to a facility and they test doors, lock doors to see if they can get in after hours. They speak to security to see what the security protocols are, right? And you know, in a non-obvious way. We've seen this in prior attackers who have done this over and over again. Um and then finally, we have the attack, right? Where the person actually follows through with it. So, this pathway doesn't have to
028be linear, right? The person doesn't have to go step by step necessarily. They can come off the pathway, they can go back on. Um but the idea is that it gives us a framework to keep in mind when we have somebody that we're concerned about. Um and you as a community can also think about these behaviors uh as you know, if you have somebody that you are concerned about. So, research that was done by the BAU shows that um four to five concerning behaviors are often exhibited by these these attackers. This is, um you know, from a research that was done from a number of prior attacks. And then, 51% of the adults that have committed attacks have actually leaked their intent. So, in other words, they posted something, they said something, they wrote something
029um that showed that they were going down this pathway. And 88%, so almost nine out of 10 juveniles leaked their intent. So, the point is is that it's out there, right? These statements are made and people can hear them. The problem is many times people ignore them and people don't think don't think that this person is actually going to follow through with it. They don't take these statements seriously, and that's that's the concern. Okay, so what's a bystander? Uh bystander is anybody that has access to this information as far as information like somebody is moving down this pathway. So, we're all bystanders. I can Even though I do this for a living, I consider myself a bystander. Um I talk to my family about this, right? My kids are aware of these ideas and these
030warning behaviors that I'll tell you about in a few minutes. Um so, we want to have these conversations, right? So, even though you might not do this for a living, you can go home, you can tell your family, you can talk to your friends, you can spread the word about what they need to look for and be aware of. Not to frighten people, but just so that they feel empowered. And we want people to feel like they're heroic and they're doing the right thing when they do >> [clears throat] >> raise their hand and let somebody know that they're concerned. >> [cough] >> Um so, the tool the the two different aspects of being a bystander, recognizing the concerning behavior and then reporting, right? Like I said before, many times people don't report, and that's
031a major concern because people have this information, but they're not conveying it to the people that need to know. So, these are four reasons why people often don't report. Number one is fear, they're concerned about what's going to happen to them, they're concerned about getting somebody in trouble who may not actually need to get in trouble. Um but again, we're not intervening necessarily to arrest somebody, even though law enforcement is involved. Our goal is to get them social services, mental health, intervene early, right? Early on before they fall into the river, um so that we we can get them help before it escalates. Um you know, there people are unsure, they're not not confident as to what they're seeing if it's really a problem. People are tired. Many times um we've seen this over and
032over again, these mass attackers, they behave like this for a very long period of time, and their family and friends are just used to it. And it's almost like they are um numb to it because they've experienced it for so long, and they say, "You know what? He's always been like this. He's not going to do anything. He's never done anything before." Right? So, we have to get over that barrier of of fatigue. And then apathy. A lot of people think, "This isn't my job, it's not my role. Um you know, somebody else will take care of it." And when they have that mindset, that's a concern because what if nobody else doesn't that take care of it? Okay, so now we'll get into some of the the concerning behaviors. So, suicide and homicide are
033linked. Um there's a very fine line between the two. And you know, we're not saying everybody who's suicidal is a risk to others. Obviously, millions of people have had suicidal ideations, have struggled with things, and have not been a danger to others. The idea is that if you know somebody who is having suicidal ideations and they're exhibiting some of the warning behaviors that I'll talk about in a few minutes, that's a major concern. Right? So, these some of the analysts I work with down Quantico, they say that if they have a case where somebody is suicidal and they have access to weapons and they're exhibiting some of these warning behaviors, that will jump the line. That's a major concern. Um you can see uh BAU research shows that about 50% of mass attackers have had
034suicidal ideations, and that number in population studies have shown is about 15%. So, three times as much for this population of mass attackers. So, somebody who's suicidal plus these other warning behaviors is a big concern. Unintentional communication, this is what I referred to as leakage before. And um you know, many times, especially with juveniles, they'll say something and somebody will be concerned, they'll confront them on it, and the juvenile will say, "Oh, it was just a joke. I didn't mean anything by it. I wasn't serious." And they'll take their word for it and nothing will come of it. And that's a big concern because we've seen that happen over and over again, and ultimately that that student did go on and conduct an attack. So, if they say something concerning, find out what's going on,
035right? Even if they've been a great student in the past, but they said something that just kind of made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, address it, find out what else is going on that caused them to say this. All right? Like I said, the statistic a minute ago, nine out of 10 juveniles leak their intent. So, that it was out there, right? They said it, they posted it. Um so, it's there for people to recognize. Emotional well-being is that they won't people assume that anybody who conducts an attack of mass violence is [clears throat] mentally ill, but in reality that's not true. Research has shown about 25% have a diagnosed mental illness, but that does not mean the other 75% are mentally well. All right? The other 75% probably had
036mental struggles. They probably had things that were going on um and they weren't mentally well. Um so, that's not being mentally well can mean poor uh coping mechanisms, it could be anger issues, things along those lines, right? So, you know, we want to know people who are struggling, who have difficulty coping with things, along with other warning behaviors, right? No one behavior means somebody's going down this road. It's a perfect storm of behaviors. Um so, again, mental illness not necessarily a driver of these situations, but it can be a factor in in the whole process of what we're doing the threat assessment. Stress is huge, right? Everybody deals with stress. But in these scenarios, we've seen that about three to four major stressors have been in the person's life in the lead-up to their attack.
037Okay? So, stress can come in a number of different ways. And as you see, you know, triggers and stressors can compound. So, for example, let's say there's a family member in the student's house who loses their job. And because of that, the family's in financial distress. And then maybe the family there is a separation of family. Somebody in the house turns to substance abuse to cope. You can see how triggers and stressors will snowball. Um and we want to deal with that early on, right? We want to know if somebody's struggling and get them assistance early on in the process. In the school environment, I like to talk about humiliating events. Um you know, because this is and not just in school, the workplace, um if somebody is humiliated, that can add to their existing
038grievance or it can create a new grievance. And uh 50% of the mass attackers that have been researched have had a humiliating event in the couple of years in the lead-up to their attack. So, we want to make sure that if somebody is going through something, if somebody has to be separated from the facility, whatever it is, try to do it in a dignified way so that way they are not embarrassed and we don't add to an existing grievance or create a new one. Risk factors, these are all pre-existing. These are all things in people's lives that maybe build um and kind of give them some of that background that pushes them in this this uh pushes them down the pathway. So, violent issues, it's not just violence that they perpetrate, but it could also
039be violence that they're exposed to. So, domestic violence, violence towards animals. I've worked a number of cases where students have been very violent towards animals, killing family pets, um killing birds, stomping on birds' eggs, things like that. So, this violence, um again, whether they're exposed to it in the household or whether they're perpetrating towards animals, getting fights in school when it's not normally their behavior, that's a concern. Physical and mental health, we discussed a few of these already. Suicidality, substance abuse, uh serious mental illness, um and you know, very various other ones associated with mental health, serious mental health like uh schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar, plus substances can be a concern. Access to weapons is a concern. Problematic behaviors like stalking, harassing behavior, uh disregard for boundaries, showing up at a location where they're
040not supposed to be there. And then social environmental would be negative family dynamics and isolation, not being social with their peers, um formerly having social activities and then losing them, that's a concern also. All right. So, now I'll just run through some of the the major concerning behaviors. Again, we talked about lack of coping mechanisms. Violence is their only option. If you hear somebody say, "This is my only option. This is the only way. I have no time left." Those are statements that are very concerning, called last resort statements. Um those are things where we want to know, we want to intervene early. And vi- violence as a fantasy, if they think about violence, if they fantasize about violence, if they're searching a lot of things online, uh violent activity, that's a big concern as
041well. Um again, violence as their only option, you can see this is kind of like a last resort statement. There is no longer any solution. Uh again, with leakage, disclosure of violent violent plans, whether it's verbal, written, online. Verbal very often gets overlooked. So, somebody says something that's concerning, don't disregard it. Um please acknowledge it. Manifestos, videos, online postings, suicide notes, all um you know, obviously concerning behavior that needs to get addressed immediately. And again, we talked about testing security. Um testing security, these are some examples, things leaked to a school resource officer, map drills. Um again, referring to what they said as a joke. And trying to get on school grounds when they get suspended or expelled, they keep coming back. Shows that they're willing to step over the line and disregard boundaries that
042have been established. These are big ones that parents really need to know about. Um obsessive interest in prior mass attackers. So, you know, a lot of these uh juveniles that conduct these attacks are fixated on prior attackers. And like I've had cases where students have built shrines up in their bedrooms, put pictures up of prior attackers, but the parents had no idea who they were cuz they just like look like other students, other kids. So, what I tell these parents, if you see pictures in their books, on their phones, you know, >> [cough] >> kids that they don't know that you don't know, take a picture of it and send it to me and we can get an idea of who this actually is. We've seen it over and over again that they are mass
043attackers. Um so, if you know of this scenario, if somebody's fixating and identifying prior attackers, dressing like prior attackers, wearing clothes and, you know, interested in music that prior attackers listen to, those are those are big concerns. Um obsessive interest in weapons. And then again, profile pictures that we talked about matching with prior attackers or prior attack sites. Um if somebody wasn't having issues socially and, you know, they weren't having problems interacting with others and now they are, along with some of these other warning behaviors, that's a big concern. They have a hard time controlling their anger, also a big concern. And this last one, um it's for the bystander to realize that if you feel like something is up and there's a concern in you and you feel like, man, something is just not
044right here, don't ignore it. Talk to somebody about it. Bring it up to somebody, somebody you trust. Have a conversation just to kind of put your feelers out there and see if maybe what you're experiencing actually has teeth and this is something that you need to raise a concern about. Mitigators are all positive, right? These are all good things in people's lives. Mitigators can swing. Somebody has good anchors in their life and they lose them, it can become a stressor. So, if somebody's doing well in school, but all of a sudden they're struggling, right? Or if their attendance starts to suffer, maybe something is going on. Um you know, future-oriented goals are great. I want to graduate, I want to get a job, I want to go to college, but it's got to be a
045realistic goal. It can't be something that is so out there that we know that they're not going to get there. Um support system in the school is huge, right? Having that support system, whether it's extracurriculars, uh yeah, activity with family, activity with friends after school, whatever it is, a positive support system, pro-social behaviors are all good things that we want. These are mitigators that we can pull on when we're doing a threat assessment if somebody is struggling in other avenues. Okay. So, best practices is, you know, if there is somebody who's always had always been great, no issues in the past, but all of a sudden things start to seem to be snowballing and and things start to seem to be, you know, compounded, focus on what's happening now. Don't focus on all the years
046in the past. What is driving this behavior now? Uh trust your instincts, right? If you feel like something is up, maybe something is going on. So, tell somebody in a position of authority. And again, talk to somebody you trust. Don't keep it to yourself. We see that often, people will approach the person with concern. Person with concern will say, "No, I'm fine. No issues." And the bystander takes their word for it, doesn't raise that concern, and things just continue to escalate. Okay. So, these are just things that the community can keep in the back of your mind. Um you can always make a tip, right? You can always call the FBI, you can call the local police. Tell somebody in the school if you um you know, if you're experiencing or if you you've dealt
047with somebody that's experiencing these issues. So, in the school environment, we want a positive environment, right? Not just for our students, but for faculty. we want people to feel like they're again, like I said earlier, they're heroic, they're doing something to contribute to solve the problem. We want them to feel good about what they're doing, and we want to encourage reporting. We want people to have multiple avenues to report. Maybe one avenue if they're not comfortable reporting that way, so we want multiple avenues so that way it gives people options. Uh if you do report a concern, you might be interviewed. Generally, we can keep these situations anonymous, especially if we intervene early on because if we intervene early on, it's probably nobody's getting arrested, it's probably not going to court, there's nothing like that,
048it's just getting person access to what they need, social services, mental health counseling, whatever it is. Um like I said, we can provide those resources through the county. And again, that's why I'm so excited about the threat assessment teams that are available to the degree. Uh FBI has has website that has a lot of these resources out there if you're interested and you want to learn more about how to prevent these acts of targeted violence. And this is just a quote from a friend of somebody who actually conducted an attack that, you know, pretty much is saying, "Don't keep it to yourself, right? Report it, let somebody know." Um but again, keep these warning behaviors, these risk factors that I talked about, keep them in the back of your mind, and remember, when you see
049somebody who's got multiple risk factors, multiple warning behaviors, things start building on top of each other, that's definitely somebody we want to know about early on. Please don't keep that to yourself just because they've always been interested in these things and they've always kind of been on the fringe, let us know. Don't don't keep it to yourself. Uh and that's it. This is um a presentation we give to the community. I have some more detailed presentations that we give to the threat assessment teams, the hospitals, the corporations. So if anybody has anybody in their life that works somewhere where you feel like they they would benefit from this type of presentation, please feel free to pass my information on. But I appreciate your time. Always feel free to reach out with any questions. Um and
050thank you. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING. >> [applause] >> I HAVE A QUESTION. I'M SORRY. GO AHEAD. I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS. Please stand up. No, wait. Okay. Is that all the seven principles ever trained with or see this presentation? Yes. Yes, so um uh all of our administrators uh sat through this presentation, but a a little bit of a more intense version. Um probably two, three weeks ago, four weeks ago. And um we have a superintendent's conference day coming up in May, I don't know the exact day, but the entire faculty and staff will see the presentation, but not the one you saw tonight, more of the the more intense one. Yes. I have a similar great communication for the elementary and secondary grade. Um I was going to ask similar to whether the teachers and
051staff had seen this presentation as well. And also, if this is something or something similar like that, would you be considering sharing with our high schoolers being that 80% of 80% of young adults let something slip with social media being as it exists today, meaning have students be aware of what they could be looking out for, you know, make sure that they feel like they could be doing the right thing rather than just being a joke on Instagram or a joke on TikTok? Yeah, uh we will. That's part of our planning, and um I can tell you that one thing that's great about the students is uh more than you would think are not afraid to come forward. They're very comfortable seeking out help when they recognize something that doesn't feel right, and they know
052who to go to as well. Um I would say >> be sharing some of the information here with the students Yeah. that have that information as well? Yeah, that's uh in the planning for We only We only met Agent Misky um when Mr. Byrne was at a conference with that was how he came across Agent Misky, and he kept telling us how great he and his presentation were, so we immediately had him in for our administrators, we have him tonight, we're having him here in May, and so we're we're going to do this stuff. Thank you for your questions. Anybody else? Okay. So um so I have some slides to share with everybody who's here this evening. Um we've been working on this probably back as November. So um we held a community forum in
053November, and I'll show you the numbers of people who attended and and looking at that evening, we surveyed our faculty and staff, and we surveyed students in grades uh 8 through 12 uh to ascertain their feelings and insights regarding school safety. So um I'm just going to go through this and basically share the results. So like I said, several months we've been working on this, we engaged the community, feedback was gathered from staff, students, parents, community members. Um The insights from this process just enabled us to do more analysis and more study. And so I'll I'll show you. So first, uh staff survey, we have approximately 800 faculty and staff in the district, we have 314 responses. And the pie chart just shows you kind of where in the district they came from. So high
054school, middle school, uh Wing, Comstock Road, Sherwood, and then uh central office, the Board of Education, the Board of Education. All right, here are some of the responses. 80 almost 84% feel safe on a typical school day. 72% believe current security measures are effective. 74% believe uh safety policies sufficient for the daily operations, and 67% of those respondents feel confident in our current procedures that they address any future safety concerns. So this was on a scale of uh 1 to 4. Um but this is some comments that they said in general about their perceptions of safety in building at the elementary level, secondary level, and uh just some miscellaneous comments. I'll give you a second to allow people to read those. Um okay, so the community forum took place on November 19th. Uh everybody uh
055who had children in the district was invited to participate. There was a presentation um similar to the one that Mr. Byrne did tonight, but it was much more in-depth, and there was also a presentation um by uh Dr. Caliendo, Dr. G Academy about our social emotional programs and support staff, psychologists, social workers, uh people of that nature. Uh and then there was uh some small group discussions following the presentations where people had the opportunity to ask questions and share opinions. So um there were 57 people that registered, there were 47 in the audience, and then there were 33 that participated in the focus groups. And that chart to the right shows you uh from which areas uh K through 12 uh people were represented. So one question was, "What are some aspects of the security
056program you feel are important to maintain, things that are done well and should be kept in place, uh uh should continue to be enhanced?" So I'll just give you a second to read some of those comments. Uh Mr. Byrne mentioned the Rave app, and somebody had some questions about it. So we keep monitoring what percentage of our faculty and staff have that uh app on their phone, and I think it's upwards of close to 60% probably by now. Um not everybody has it, but uh many people do. Oh, and uh >> [cough] >> just go back to this, we have something called MOOV, M O O V, that's an app at the high school, and we'll be having it at the middle school next year. Students have to swipe into their classrooms, it's a method
057to take attendance. They uh swipe when they leave the classroom if they want to use the restroom, or go to the nurse, or go to the school counselor, or go to the main office. When they get to their destination, they swipe again. So they swipe when they enter the bathroom, they swipe when they leave the bathroom, they swipe when they return to the classroom. So it's really helped a lot knowing you know, people are where they're supposed to be, so that's one of the benefits. Okay, so more on the what people from the community thought like we should maintain and leave that. Move that. Security vestibule vestibules often referred to as man traps. I don't know if you visited school during the day recently but when I first arrived if you showed up at one
058of our buildings you could open up the front door, walk in and you would have to speak to somebody behind the window and they would have the pleasure of letting you into the second door. We changed those procedures pretty much almost immediately. We added a video intercom outside of every building so when you show up now the procedure should be that you buzz, a person on the other end of the phone should ask you know your reason for the visit and you're going to see who is the person you know. They're supposed to confirm that. Once that's confirmed then you're admitted through the first door and you show your identification and then the person is ready to meet you and they'll escort you to your location. That's really important because keeping the first door unlocked
059is really uh not utilizing the first line of defense so they put the security at the gate at the on the campus is important. Qualified security staff and interior and exterior cameras. It was mentioned during the presentation earlier we are working to utilize smart card money. We have worked with our principals and locked out every hallway of every building in the district. And so we have color coded maps of building >> [clears throat] >> cameras where we want to take existing cameras and put them in new locations to put cameras in more efficient in some locations and that will be happening in the coming months. Okay and then the community also felt there were some areas in need of improvement. I'll give you a second to read those. And just a comment on the second
060to last bullet here where this person wrote I'd like for there to be a couple of lockdown drills that are released by police. So that was an interesting point because we do more than the minimum number of required lockdown drills in our buildings. But we have not had a drill released by police coming to the door and releasing a statement for the lockdown drill. So that's certainly something we'll talk to our SRO about. But what I can't tell you is when we do our lockdown drills it's not typical for Roosevelt Island but our SRO comes to our buildings and observes our lockdown drills so that she can offer some guidance and suggestions for improvement. And we do have a relationship with the inspector of the third precinct and police officers drive through our campuses fairly
061regularly and for no reason other than just being in the buildings and familiarizing themselves with the layout they they often do stop and visit inside the buildings. Any more suggestions? Okay and uh there there are always you know in this issue there are people that are in support of adding armed security and there are people that that would prefer we don't and so here are some >> [snorts] >> Here's what some of the parents are saying. Okay so the next thing we did was a survey of the parents of all of our students. So this survey was sent out to approximately 5,200 email addresses. We had 429 responses. So 429 responses out of 5,200 emails is not a good response rate. It's not a reliable response rate or a number that's you can't really use
062it to make conclusions. It it could inform maybe priorities and stuff so while I share this data with you this evening it's not a data source that we could rely on as representative of how the community feels. We can't make any conclusions based on this and we did make a great effort to get people to participate. We sent several reminders, sent email out multiple times to to try to get an increased response rate. Again the pie chart just shows where the responses came from. High school level, middle school level, upper elementary grades 2 through 5 and lower elementary and pre-K. So this was a one to four question how would you rate your overall security and safety measures? So you can see about 80% uh felt that our security And I'll give you a second
063to just some people's comments about part of you took the survey and maybe you recall that we asked a question and then we kind of asked people to qualify and give us a why. This is an example of the why. Just to confirm the year four were saying in the last question that they were overall very satisfied. Yeah. Okay. Yeah we we when we did it with the parents we did not change from when we surveyed the teachers. With this not just teachers and all of the faculty and staff but with that group we had a one to five scale and we had a lot of threes but that's not really usable for us. You have to give all the parents to help us to help guide the you know some decisions and conversations so
064when we sent it to the community we gave them all four choices. All right we'll get to the one So of those uh 400 and change uh these are some of the answers we got to uh Would you prefer armed guards outside the building? So you can see that response there. And what I what I found out when I read through the responses whether it was teachers um or students or faculty staff or parents um those who who preferred to not have armed guards were a little bit more expressive in their reasons why. And people who preferred armed guards um gave answers that were a little little bit more short answers you know would make it safer and it's necessary today but they didn't really elaborate. And the next uh couple of sets of comments
065you'll see some of the thoughts of people who thought maybe it's not necessary or not the best decision. Very good. >> [snorts] >> All right, so students Uh so this survey was sent to um about 1,040 students approximately in grades 8 through 12. We um asked students to do the survey in their um advisory period in the middle school and we asked them to do it in the homeroom in the high school. And so somewhat of a captive audience and I I hope the response rate would have been a little bit better, but um this is this is what we have and uh you can see how many responded from each grade. So almost 83% of the students who responded feel safe and very safe in the school building every day. Almost 74% believe the
066current security measures are effective or very effective. And you can see 61% of those 300-plus students who feel more safe we have armed security. And here's how a couple of the questions broke down for those students who responded. Again, it's just a way to see each question from the first two that I presented. And here's what some students said they feel about armed security. Sure. Were the students given any sort of background prior to the survey such as the armed guard would be trained, qualified, former consultant or were they just a school armed guard? Yeah, just on security. I don't I didn't really have an opportunity to uh you know, because of uh I I mean I I think it's a given that if we hire armed [snorts] security, we would make sure they have
067all the training necessary and and background and >> that's a given. I don't know that for I assume that's for the given. Yeah, the and uh fair point um but the second part I was going to say is that what we didn't talk about was whether they'd be in the building or outside the building and such. So yes, your question is valid. And the other part of some of this feedback is giving like walking into an airport and then walking around with machine guns. I mean at the end of the day, it's a concealed armed guard who walks in anywhere. They So I you don't know who people are carrying guns, right? That's the whole point. You're not supposed to be able to know. So I think some of this feedback they're missing is what
068people are walking around with visible machine guns and kids are going to be scared or just the feeling like you call it. I mean like that's not the case, but if they're armed, they're concealed, students feel Yeah. Well, some of these students have given positive feedback or negative feedback. I don't know. I I think adults I think we know that adults are not kids. If they knew that it would be concealed or if they knew that they were going to be, you know, qualified, trained, former consultant like that or they were just going to be walking around with their armed guard. Yeah, it was a yeah. Can't answer your question. All right, here's what students uh were nervous about now. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I miss a question? Just a question of clarification. Are these
069armed security people actually in the building or outside school? >> [snorts] >> Uh well, the answer to that is it hasn't been determined. Right. Okay. So this is still just part of the process. Okay. That's the process we're coming to. Yes. How do other school districts that have that we know have armed guards do it and what's the budget Uh great question and uh as far as I can tell from those I've spoken with, it it really varies. So um um one district I'm aware of increased the hourly rate of pay for their armed guards and uh asked a few of them to carry them. Uh one district I'm aware of employees well, has several several people that are um uh this sounds so unprofessional, forgive me. I just can't think of the word at
070the top of my head right now, but they've signed up to carry the carry to be armed. They're not all armed at the same time on the same day. So on Monday, it might be I might be the person with the gun. On Tuesday, you might be the person with the gun. And uh so one district I'm aware of has one person one guard who drives a car around the whole district all day. Um and then I'm aware of another district that has um uh approximately seven or eight armed security and the budget's quite large. It's probably over half a million. So it it really varies. Does that help? Does that answer your question? >> Yeah, I'm just thinking for us, you know, what's the if there is the possibility, what's the budget if you
071had like a mention of the options for that that we could look at. Yeah, just kind of see like if it's one guard that rotates between schools like East Islip. We were just talking about how East Islip had that scenario and what the budget was. Yeah, so um I mean for for us I'm sorry. She was talking. Yeah, go on. Do you want to I don't know. I had some more figures that I had done research on before I presented this. I think East Islip um thank you for sharing that that's what their information was. I believe they do almost like keep the raise in your go to carry. It was not significant. It was something like $6 an hour additional if you were carrying. West Islip, I believe they had a $200,000 increase for
072their security overall. Maybe something similar where they raised it the salary if you were lucky to carry. But for those two, the numbers weren't significant. There are a lot more on the island. I didn't look into all of them. As I said, it was probably something else that was much higher. Right. It's different levels. >> yeah, right. But like I said, the many options they probably could do is showing you the way you could do it. Yeah, of course. I I worked in the Manhattan. I worked in commercial property management for 15 years. So we had different levels of security guards. So and it's the same thing. You want to get, you know, a detailed pay detail. You know, that's obviously in New York City. Right. If you have one carrying or five carrying concealed
073Right. You get different levels. So that's why I'm just saying like what's our budget? What could we do? What's the possibilities for the future? But there's a lot of different options. Right. That can fit our budget. Yeah, I mean I you know, we've done some estimating and if we wanted to hire a say an armed security guard for every building and we wanted to take into account um after school activities and we wanted to take into account um sports competitions and we wanted to take into account homecomings and events where we have large numbers of people, I think for here we're probably looking at $400,000. If we wanted to uh have an armed guard for each building and consider just school hours, we might be looking at a number that's closer to 300,000. You know,
074and then any other estimates uh you know, we're we're not here to share opinions tonight, but I I feel compelled to say one thing that um my personal and professional belief is that if I I can't stand here and tell you I wouldn't be able to stand here and tell the community we have armed security if we put one person in a car for our whole district. That's how I feel. And so I would I I think that would be misleading, but that's just me. Um all right, so if we can get back to this with just a couple minutes on on you know, some of the things students said they would be concerned This is a school that to your point, you know, looking at the last bullet that's clearly a person who thinks
075that the guards will be walking around the building, right? So that is Right. They're walking around with a shot. Yeah, so Um however, you know, what I've I'll point out to you is that although students are giving reasons why they're concerned and perhaps they didn't know anything, you know, what it would be like, still 61% of those who responded said I'd rather have Right. No, just reiterating. Yeah. and so um this is pretty much my last slide. It just sums up the three different groups. And like I said, um it's been a quite a while since I had to take a course in statistics but um really to to have a survey data that's usable and kind of reliable, you're looking at 30 to 40% response rate. And uh the closest we have that to
076is the faculty and the admin groups. We don't have that, so while we can use the data that's in this to kind of have some discussions about, we can't really use it to make some conclusions about That's 71% of uh what did I say? 400 and something. But that out of 5,000, you know, listen, here's my numbers this is an estimate, right? Let me be clear on how what I'm saying that. Maybe it could be 5,000 because we have approximately uh 2,700 students and we sent it out to every home. Multiply that by two is 5,200, so maybe there's 4,900 parents. You know, I don't know exactly, but it's it's in the ballpark of um you know, 8 to 9% response rate. Um well, You mean you mean on the poll the night of the
077budget vote? Uh so, we could look into that as a future consideration, but we couldn't use that for this year's budget. Cuz it would be too late by the budget vote night. Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, that would be up to it's something we'd have So, was that right? You said 1,300 people voted for the budget? Well, we're doing it from memory. Ms. Carr thinks it could have been between 1,300 and 1,500. Right, but then we have I'm pretty sure it's about 1,300. So, there's a So, we do have 30% of the people that voted for the budget. No, no, not exactly because the Well, this this uh 400 something is over the 5,000 emails we parents may have. Right. And that 1,500 is the whole community. So, I don't know that they're the same people.
078They're not the same people. Right, but if only 1,300 people showed for a budget vote, those are the ones that you know are And then you have 400 at that, there's about 30%. I mean, I think I follow you on the budget, but I'm just not sure we can use it that way, but No, 1,300 people are active in the community. Right, that's that's I I agree. But you're saying 5,000 are active because you have emails. Emails are 5,000 parents may not be active in voting for the budget for education. Correct. Okay, so if you want to take a minute Uh folks, any other uh discussions for uh tonight's presentation? What's the conclusion? Excuse me? What's the Like, where are we now? Where we are right now is that you know, as you can see,
079there's been a a lot of information that's been given. Um you know, we're still in you know, in the process of what's going on with our budget. As you mentioned, it's one thing to be proactive. But we play getting ready to get ready. So, that's one of the things we need to do. Uh play getting ready is one police officer, one security guy will be around the district. So, we have to determine what what we want If if we're going to go this route, again, people throwing around menus of what what level are we going to do? Is it going to be at all sporting events? Is it going to be 24, you know, at every event? Is it going to be during the school day? Where is it? The number of people There's a
080lot going into it. So, to just say right now this is what we're doing, we can't do it. There's still a lot of There's a lot of consideration we can consider. There's a lot of information that's been given. That's a lot that needs to be considered. Right, but what I'm kind of hearing is there's not enough information yet from the community to be able to make a decision. So, what I'm hearing here is we're going to continue this along and keep going. Like, at some point, are we [cough and clears throat] going to have a vote where it's a budget vote? Like, we got to do something Right. Yeah, I mean, that's we have to The The other thing, too, right? So, if you if you're going to do like that menu, right? And you
081have different choices. So, I I don't like the idea of what it was if you would do it at at a school where you vote, you know, at a budget vote. But actually, you could see a different You'll see it, too, at regular elections with simple propositions. So, so as a proposition, proposition one is this, proposition two is this. That's where you can really get a representative. And again, like I said, some of these statistics something that could be really skewed. Three people, let's say here, three people and two people go one way, so that's 66% and they voted or 66% could be not voting. So, you really need a larger pool of people. But I like that idea. I don't know if there's any way if you have time on that ballot similar to
082what we do at regular elections where you do have a proposition. This way the people understand what the tax education would be, what it's going to cost to the district. >> [clears throat] >> Yeah, I I mean, I think that'd be a really good way to Say what you want to >> that there's a lot of people that did not a huge majority that voted. Only getting 21 votes for the budget for education. Those are the people that you're looking at to kind of put this out there and just So, we could say to them, you know, with proposition one, would you be interested in XYZ? Would you be interested in, you know, one, two, three? Kind of go that way. Throw it out there. Maybe this year it was too late for for nothing.
083Not to get a definitive answer, just to see what we can anticipate and kind of take that to the next step for next year's budget. It can't be a proposition. I just said the survey. >> Sir, I would be I would be happy to ask Ms. Carr to help her. I would say I'm going to say I'd be happy to do it, but really it would be Ms. Carr really doing the bulk of the work and I would have to help her, but we we would be happy to look into that possibility to see if the voting machines give us the option of adding this survey question. Um You don't know. >> [laughter] >> Maybe we could do a equal one later. You know, you know, No, you know what we may be able to
084do? We may be able to make a QR code that everybody comes in with a cell phone, hit the QR code, it'll bring you right to a Google survey. You can see how many people on that evening would be willing to do it. The only way we do that is by making them submit their email address. If I understand correctly, so. The only concern would be if you have people with multiple email addresses. Then for me personally, I have a work email, personal email. Is there a way to prevent someone from submitting a survey twice? And also, you have to look at who are you looking to survey? Are you just looking for parents, all community members? Like, what I'm And I'm just saying So, you would look for like an open community Well, we
085can do some brainstorming on that and and see if there's something we can do. I I We we could go old school and do it by hand, and then that would ensure one per person, too. And we need some volunteers to help us count. Yeah, Ms. Carr She says I'm a microphone, but she said she could look into a ballot box and we could try to put something together. We'd be happy to try that. So, you want to prevent perspective students 15,000 people that actually voted for the school budget. How is that verified that these people can actually vote in the district? Someone like going