For the eight school districts in the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborate, the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District was named the model to lead the consortium in school safety. Titled Region-on-Call, the districts have developed a systemic approach to safety. The project will establish a school safety network to strengthen Emergency Response Crisis Management (ERCM) in the communities of Agawam, East Longmeadow, Hampden-Wilbraham, Longmeadow, Ludlow, Southwick-Tolland, and West Springfield.

Total funding for the project comes from a $326,279 18 month grant received from the U.S. Department of Education. This is the third year the district has been awarded a grant.

“Collectively, the school district recognize the responsibility for school safety as one of our most important duties,” said School Committee Chairperson Scott Chapman at the press conference held on November 2 in the auditorium. “This significant grant will serve as a foundation to address mutual issues of school safety and emergency preparedness. During the grant’s 18-month award, our communities will tackle common challenges while improving communication between schools, municipal offices and safety personnel throughout the consortium.”

The ERCM breaks down into four stages that are addressed differently. “One of the strongest developments in school safety is the ability to separate it into different components in how schools need to be ready and prepared,” said Gina Kahn, Risk Prevention Services Coordinator. “The four stages, Mitigation and Prevention, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery, were identified and evolved from the US Department of Education in conjunction with a lot of other agencies and a lot of other inputs, including the Department of Justice, Secret Service, and Department of Public Health.”

Mitigation means it may not be possible to prevent every incident, but steps can be taken for in case it does. “For example, you might not be able to prevent power failure, but you can lessen the impact if you have back-up power generators or any other energy source,” said Kahn. “Not all crises or problems are preventable. It might not seem like school safety, but it is. It there’s an outbreak of the flu, that’s significant. It may be as simple as a campaign to remind people how to properly wash hands.”

Currently in place that are considered part of this stage are the new locked security doors, security cameras, faculty identification badges, and annual safety audits. Also in each school building in the district there is a safety team. Each team is responsible for reviewing that building’s safety conditions.

“In Preparedness, it’s about readiness to respond. It includes procedures, protocols, plans. Things like what do we do what the lights go out? What do we do when an intruder in the building? Even in something environmental, like a chemical spill in a Chemistry lab? It’s important that everyone knows roles and responsibilities,” Kahn said.

With Response, understood most as drills and plans, the district has already made one change. “We’re trying to move towards ‘lock-down drills’ instead of calling them ‘code gray,’” said Kahn.

The fourth stage is Recovery which is how to resume to normal activities. “Recovery historically has been seen as counselors available after a tragedy,” said Kahn, “but, in the science of school security, it’s that and more. Recovery is also very tangible things. If, in a storm, an area of the building is damaged, but activities normally in that part still need to resume, how do we make that work?”

Chapman said the school safety will never be at a finished state. “We have made advances in improving our district’s capacity for Emergency Response and Crisis Management, but we also know that there is always more work to do,” he said.



School safety teams approach Kahn with requests for funding for their individual projects and then it is decided whether the project fits within the grant’s boundaries. “There might be things schools identify as significant fundings,” she said, “but when you think of it being for eight districts, and over 50 schools, it’s not the kind of money that will get us cameras for every school. It’s not designed for supplies. It’s more for planning, realizing what we need and have, more to strengthen the safety capacity of each of the buildings, to increase the effectiveness of the procedures.”

For the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District, there “won’t be any short-term or immediate changes. We already have in place lock-down procedure and visitor entry measures. For our own district there probably won’t be a huge and obvious change. But by helping to maintain safety in the region, we really are helping our own schools to be safer.”