School safety discussed at Milford School Board

At a recent school meeting, Dr. Jessica Weller, Supervisor of School Climate and Safety, along with Dr. Jennifer Hallman, Director of Student Services, provided Milford School District Board of Education Members information on protocols put in place to protect students and staff. The presentation included photos of the constables as well as School Resource Officers who are placed in the building as a protective measure.

“From a safety lens, we just wanted to kind of capture all the things that we were able to accomplish in the 2023-24 school year, as well as over the summer. We have trained all district employees, except for six who are scheduled in October, in our violent intruder response training,” Weller said. “We have our child nutrition, our maintenance technology, custodial and all instructional staff trained in that and administrative teams, we have updated our emergency response and emergency operation plans and identified our incident command structures and rally points for all of our schools.”

The district identified “hard corners,” which are areas that cannot be accessed visually from a doorway or the vision panel in the door. All vision panels in all schools have covers as do windows in the offices. If there is an incident, those panels drop and are attached at the bottom so that an intruder cannot see into the classroom or office through the glass. Those panels will also be added to hard corner areas to block access to the door. All staff have been provided a safety bag that has materials that can be used to assist them in following safety protocol, whether that be evacuation, lockdown or defense.

“We have implemented training for  all of our staff, and were able to implement our behavioral threat assessment and suicide risk assessment process, including the electronic dashboard. This school year, I will tell you that we have been using this a lot so far. Yes, we are very much implementing this process,” Weller said. “It’s been very helpful, and we have implemented in all of our schools and trained our admin and appropriate student staff teams in that area. So, we continue our collaboration with the Milford Police Department in areas of safety, messaging with the community, as well as preparing for emergencies.”

The district is working with the community to identify two locations for each school that would be an area to unify after an emergency. The biggest obstacle is the Milford High School and Milford Central Academy campus as it is very large. This makes it difficult to identify an area away from the school in case of an emergency.

“Safety is not going to be something that we’re thinking about in that moment. It’s something that we think about every day, and we have spread it out across the school year. In August, we had training, we will talk about it again in September and October at staff meetings. We will do a tabletop exercise in the January and February staff meeting, and then we will do our Intruder alert drills and continue that ongoing messaging and support and coaching throughout the year so it’s always in the forefront of their thought process,” Weller said. “ And from a school, from the Student Services and Climate lens, we collaborated to ensure and implement a multi-tiered systems of something throughout, we made sure everyone had a procedures manual, and not just for academics with reading and math, but as well with social and emotional learning. This year, we introduced that social and emotional learning curriculum to our school district, and we have preset curriculum that is being taught once a week to every grade.”

The district hired two clinical social workers that are placed at the secondary campus. The district will begin using a new mental health screening assessment that allows students to self-rate, reducing the time it takes for staff to conduct the assessments. All data is compiled in the campus system where it can be monitored easily. School Board President Scott Fitzgerald asked what was taught as part of social and emoitional learning.

“Things like self regulation, goal setting, responsible decision making. friends, how to set boundaries, to identify emotion and healthy relationships, how to use the internet appropriately,” Hallman said. “We are also starting a School Climate and Safety Council with internal and external stakeholders. Our first meeting will be September 23, and we do have members from the staff as well as parents, so we are very excited to get that going and see what kind of input we have from the community, our families as well as our staff on how to identify areas of improvement and growth. They’re going to continue because this is an area that is not new, but it’s not something that’s always done in education, the incident command and emergency response structure. So we’re going to continue to coach on that this school year.”

The district is also looking at discipline, holding discipline training for teachers and make the entire process more efficient, effective and progressive. Discipline data will be tracked and areas will be identified where the district can improve. The district also plans to complete the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design assessment, a security assessment that helps staff understand the natural setting available to deal with disruptive behavior.

“We have a pilot program at Milford Central Academy right now, and it is a discipline and transition room that we are applying for multiple reasons, one from the discipline lens to reduce exclusionary discipline, which would be out of school suspension, but it’s also increasing the accountability and the time for the students to really understand and reflect what they did and learn from what they did,” Hallman said. “We have a teacher in the room, special education teacher and a licensed social worker in the room. So they are kind of going at it as a tag team. They’re getting their academics done, so they’re not losing any type of academics from the classroom setting. And they do have a teacher in there, so it is not considered in school suspension.”

According to Hallman, this allows staff to dive deeper into conflict resolution.

“We have had students who were already in a fight in the room, and we were able to mediate. And when they left the room, they are friends. So, we’re really looking forward to having some really good data to show you from this room, reading some of the information that the kids who have been in there have provided already,” Hallman said. “I think it’s going to do a lot of really great things for us, from a discipline lens and a mental health lens and the wording of the room itself. We named it the Bridges Room, just to give it a nice little acronym, because that’s what we do, in education. We love our acronyms.”

Hallman explained that the district was developing better protocols when bringing students back from mental health facilities as well. The district is also looking at adding decorative vinyl to the windows of Milford Central Academy’s cafeteria and library rather than large fabric panels. The vinyl would have graphics or designs that would allow students to see out but no one would be able to see into the rooms.

“My question to you is we’ve had school shootings in several states already, so my first question to you is, our plans related to guns and weapons. So that these guns, rifles, whatever they’re using are not getting into school and nobody knows about,” Board Member Jean Wylie said. “How is this happening with this type of thing that are going on for these kids where they evidently had problems before, and there was definitely a lack of follow up. I think there should be more follow up. And this kid was allowed to come back, to school, but there was no follow up.”

Weller stated that the entire district, whether staff or students, were encouraged strongly that if they see something, say something. Weller explained that staff are considered the first responders when a student is having a mental health crisis.

“A lot of these situations that you’re seeing across the country, there’s a pathway to violence. These students and these external intruders are not waking up and deciding at eight o’clock in the morning, this is what I’m going to go do. They have a plan. They have a grievance, they have an ideation, they start planning, they start mapping, they start getting things to accomplish their goal,” Weller said. “Throughout this process, there’s leakage, there’s things that they are demonstrating that they need help. The behavioral health process is open to all of them, like it’s the most important things to prevent these things from happening, because we are able to one track when that leakage is happening. We also have the safety app. It used to be called Stop it, an anonymous reporting app, because there’s data out there to show that students and even parents don’t know where they can report these things.”

When the district receives an alert from the reporting app, they take it seriously, Weller explained. All alerts are investigated and the student provided the services they need. As for weapons, if a student is found with a weapon at school, Milford Police Department are immediately called. The student then is followed by staff to address the mental health issues that led them to bring a weapon to school. Wylie also asked about parent notification, stating that with cell phones in school, students are texting rumors to parents which leads parents to come to school. Weller explained that they were working on a more robust media campaign to get information out when there is an emergency at school.

“Like to throw out a trial balloon, to my knowledge, it has never been mentioned in the public school meeting here in Milford. But what do you think the value of metal detectors are, and how could you integrate them into if you do agree that they are something that would be a positive, how would you integrate them into our systems?” Board Vice-President Matt Bucher said.

Weller stated she had done research on metal detectors in schools.

“They are using them with vaping issues, like if they are suspected of having vaping or have a vape on you, they can use the metal detector to see where it would be on the body without physically searching students, which I think would be very beneficial for us. But from a safety lens, we have done some research, I do know the most cost effective product that I think would benefit us as a district, and I think if we started with extracurricular activities and built up from there,” Weller said. “There’s some research out there that shows that it can be counterproductive with creating a sense of fear that is not really there because you are walking through a metal detector, but I do see it’s just coming with the times, with all of the especially at sporting events in large community events that we hold, there are can see a need for it.”

Wylie suggested the elimination of backpacks as most students used Chromebooks for educational purposes.

“That is a slippery slope as for females, if you need a purse at a certain time like that kind of thing, are we going to say no purses? Are we going to say no bags all together? Are we just going to say no book bags? Are we going to let students who might need them for medical reasons have them?” Weller said. “Like, I think that would have to be something we’d have to do a lot of research on. I don’t see a lot of schools saying no book bags. I’ve seen clear book bags. There’s lockers. You could put a book bag in a locker.”

Wylie stated that her research indicated schools found the bookbag ban was working since students don’t even use lockers any longer because they don’t need them. They wear their coat or hoodie all day and just carry things in their bookbag rather than go to lockers.

“The issue, particularly in high school, with ending book bags, would be a lot of the kids have to take their entire days’ worth of textbooks with them because there’s no time. You got four minutes between class changes, at least that way, the way it was 2019 when my son had a locker for four years in high school,” Bucher said. “Never used it once because he didn’t have time. Because our building is overcrowded, and due to the way they have to stack the classes, there’s just no time to go to a locker and change textbooks. So he carried the whole thing with him. I don’t know if that’s practical in the short term. I don’t want to name the school district, but it’s actually pretty well respected school district in Delaware, has metal detectors at the front entrance and everybody gets wanded to come in. Do you think that has value, or that’s just going to slow progress? You know, in entering and exiting school? Is that something that potential security benefits would outweigh the probably major inconvenience. Should we just, you know, not even entertain something like that? Think we need to do some research”

Weller agreed that more research was necessary and told the board she would look into it for a future meeting. Bucher asked if the cell phone policy which was being more strongly enforced this year was helping. Weller stated that students were keeping phones off and away.

“You know, there’s been a couple of comments tonight about unthinkable actions, and I appreciate that on a on a lower level, though, one of the things that I would like to see you be able to provide, and if you need funding for that, I would very much like every teacher who wants one to have a walkie talkie that works, that is reliable, that if he or she calls for help, there’s an immediate response, something that we need,” Board member Dr. Adam Brownstein said. “Because not every traumatic event is a school shooting, right? It can be just someone who gets unhinged in the classroom dealing with that issue promptly prevents it from escalating and involving other property damage, etc. And I know historically, we struggled with, do we have enough walkie talkies? Do we have the capacity for them to function and then who’s listening on the other end to respond to that? Panic buttons are great, but if we have no way for the staff to relay that message that’s a break in the chain of command. So and again, a panic button is great, but you got to be near the panic button. What if a teacher is walking the hallways and there’s an issue, there’s they don’t have a panic button on them. So I think a walkie talkie is a more portable solution. And if you guys need funding, we need to figure out a way as a board to provide that to you.”

Weller explained that the panic buttons would be pendants worn by the teacher on the lanyards they already use which would make walkie talkies unnecessary. She also explained that there was only one bandwidth for walkie talkies in the schools. There were also confidentiality issues related to students. Weller also had concerns that in an emergency, staff would talk over each other.

“For the radios, we can look into some communication tools. They do have phones in their classrooms. They have WebEx computers. We will have the ability, with the lanyards that they can hit the button to get assistance immediately. They will have almost like a light switch panel on the wall they can hit immediately,” Weller said. “If they’re walking through the halls, they can go into someone’s classroom and push that button. It’s right by the doorway. So we can train our staff to use the tools that we have right now, but I will look into communication pieces as well.”

President Scott Fitzgerald applauded the Bridges Room, asking how many had used it already this year.

“So far we’ve had four and we have three more joining tomorrow, and there’s another one as soon as the meeting gets set with the parents that they should be going into the room, and they’re spending about five days in there, but then they’re circling back for four weeks after they leave the room, and working with our social worker, I’m super excited about it,” Hallman said. “I think your question is, like any day of a week we could have 10 to 12, and right now, we are only just transitioning to these those who have been in fights. We can put other kids in there if it’s like a extenuating circumstance. We didn’t want it to get too much right now, and we really wanted to focus on the conflict resolution from the fighting, because that’s the incidents that cause the most roar and trauma in our schools and damage in our schools. So we’re trying to reduce the amount of altercations, which so far we are on a decrease.”

Wylie asked if this was going to be part of the behavior plan for special education students who may have behavioral problems.

“Dr Hayman’s discussing one of the cool things about our social and emotional curriculum that we purchase is the behavior intervention suite,” Weller said. “So for those students who are continuously having those behavior issues, we can offer multiple educational modules that then the teacher circles back with or the counselor, whoever their person is, they circle back with them and help them process through the questions at the end, and yes, we have a special education certified teacher in that room, so we can make sure we can serve special education students in there as well.”