North Penn High School.
In the wake of the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, North Penn School District Coordinator of Emergency Management and Safe Schools Chris Doerr and Upper Gwynedd Township Police Chief David Duffy assured the Safe Schools Committee and the community Tuesday night that district policies, operational aspects and daily up-to-the-minute two-way communication and coordination with local law enforcement means North Penn would likely not see the problems identified in the Texas response.
Doerr said he was tasked by North Penn School Board Director and Committee Chairman Jonathan Kassa to discuss the district’s investments in school safety and security over the last four years.
For starters, there is ongoing surveillance upgrades across the district, and more than 900 individual surveillance cameras positioned throughout the district. Doerr said antiquated technology installed in the early 2000s has been upgraded.
“On top of that, there are school transport vehicles with surveillance capabilities and GPS,” Doerr said. “We’re able to track those vehicles, both ones we own and ones we contract from First Student, in real time. Should there be an emergency, we can know at any given moment where that vehicle is.”
Doerr said the district’s bus ridership program is “in the process of standing up right now” and it allows the district to see who is on a school vehicle at any given time.
“If there is an emergency on a school vehicle, we want to know who is on it so we can act appropriately,” he said.
The district also has a mass notification system in place for its stakeholders, which includes integration with fire alarms and lockdown buttons through Alertus Technologies.
“There are rapid lockdown buttons in school offices. One touch can initiate a lockdown communication throughout a facility,” he said. “Now all end points, no matter what they are, can be alerted.”
Doerr said many fire alarm systems were significantly upgraded or replaced as recent as last summer, and the same goes for phone and public address systems.
“Significant dollars were spent there to make sure they were up to date,” he said.
Property and building signage updates were completed in the last several years, which included development of collaborative response maps.
“We’re all familiar with the given school facility – where the rooms are and where the access points are,” Doerr said. “Maps have been drafted and provided in advance to public safety partners.”
School entry hardware that was installed after the Columbine massacre in 1999 has been upgraded, he said. Going together with that was a rebuild and audit of staff IDs and building access.
"We did a rebuild of the staff ID process, a process by which staff who works for us obtains an ID,” Doerr said. “We have a lot of build up over the years of old antiquated IDs, and folks who no longer work here that had an ID floating out there. We were able to bring that all back in and make sure we were deliberate with who has an ID and what access that gives them.”
Doerr said all North Penn students have an ID, and depending on the grade level, a student may use an ID to check into school in the morning.
The district’s radio communication system has developed steadily over the years, and there are more than 625 radio units used throughout the district every single day for routine operations and emergency response, Doerr said.
“We are really happy with the design collaboration and the level of involvement in the design phase from a security standpoint (for Crawford Stadium, Knapp Elementary, and North Penn High School),” he said. “SCHRADERGROUP has been on top of the latest and greatest in school security as it’s designed into the project.”
The district employs 19 safety and security staff members, and Doerr said the district was quick to make sure it codified how the Office of Emergency Management and Safe Schools operates and how it developed procedure and policy, especially as it related to incident documentation. At one point, security staff was able to tour the county 911 response center to witness how 911 calls are handled and put into context what happens when a 911 call is made for an emergency at a school.
To date, the district’s Safe2Say Something program has gathered 582 safety and security tips, with 75 of them being life safety tips, Doerr said.
As far as threat assessment development, Doerr said that, because of the work of the district Safe Schools Committee, it was an early adopter of a program that is now mandatory for all school districts in Pennsylvania.
“We were ahead of the curve,” Doerr said.
Doerr said the entire purpose of the district’s North Penn School Police strategy was one of proactive communication and situational awareness. He said school police staff are on the radio with county dispatch and local police department during times when students are in school.
“Why that’s important: if (the events leading up to the Uvalde shooting) were to occur in our area, our school police officers immediately hear the same dispatch from 911 that our local police hear. The difference is our police are tasked not to respond as police, but monitor the situation as it unfolds,” Doerr said. “Police are concerned with the emergency of the moment and thinking of a thousand contingencies. We want to take the contingency of school off the plate because we can react to that.”
If something drastic is unfolding in a neighborhood around a school, the district can immediately initiate a lockdown and lockout.
“It sounds to me like, from what we know now, an unlocked door is the way that this attacker gained entry into the school. Make no mistake about it,” Doerr said, “our policy in North Penn School District is that all exterior doors in all our schools during school hours are closed and locked.”
Doerr said arrival and dismissal times are highly supervised and entrances are monitored by staff.
“We do communicate our expectations on a regular basis, and we do communicate propped door reminders in springtime to remind staff they cannot prop doors open,” Doerr said. “We cannot leave doors unlocked. It’s just not safe. Our school security officers do audit the situation.”
Doerr called it a “community effort” when district staff members participate to always keep schools safe.
“There is an expectation that classroom doors are locked. We have procedures for quick securement of classroom space and that starts with doors being locked. That is the policy and practice in North Penn,” he said.
You can watch the Safe Schools Committee meeting in its entirety for more details here.
See also:
Police, School District Officials Respond to Petition Questioning School Safety
North Penn School Board Issues Statement On Gun Violence
North Penn Superintendent Releases Statement in Wake of Texas Elementary School Shooting
North Montco Technical Career Center Locked Down Thursday Morning
