By Lily McInerney
In the wake of senseless acts of violence within schools across the country, the Irvington school district hired a new security firm, Altaris Security, to evaluate the safety precautions utilized in Irvington schools. Irvington High School has had numerous meetings and added many safety precautions to the high school, according to administrators.
The Paw Print‘s freedom of information act (FOIA) request for the Altaris Security audit of the school was denied by the school district due to the “sensitive items, confidential security protocol, and emergency procedures” in the report, but Carol Stein, Assistant Superintendent for Business, agreed to an interview to discuss new security initiatives.
“We attended lots of seminars, and I read a lot of material so there’s tons of input that we are using in order to inform our decisions. Some of the things we can clearly do and we have done, and other things are going to take longer,” said Ms. Stein.
The Irvington Union Free School District is developing a capital bond project to address, among other things, safety and security on each campus.
Ms. Stein made it clear that some aspects of the bond project were going to take time. In the meantime, the district is working on some short-term enhancements like adding more roaming security officers to patrol the open parts of the campus.
“While we are excited about the potential enhancements that the bond project could further provide, we are continuing to work on enhancements in the short term as well,” said high school principal David Cohen.
The district has added more security officers to the campus, according to Ms. Stein, and has also implemented a detailed set of visitor protocols including the need for all visitors to wear color-specific, visitor badges and lanyards. This allows all staff to easily identify visitors, and to also recognize any potential intruders.
One measure — utilizing magnetic strips on classroom door locks as a safety measure — ultimately proved unsuccessful as most broke or wore out too quickly, but Ms. Stein said that this initiative was “relatively inexpensive.”
The openness of the campus is something that many students regard as being an unsafe feature.
“I don’t feel safe because there are so many ways anyone can get into the school because it is so open,” said Dylan Hudson, junior.
This aspect is at the heart of the administration and school board’s capital bond project.
“One of the things that our consultant will be speaking on at our capital project meeting and one of the things that’s on our capital project recommendation is to add proper vestibules in all of our schools. That way the actual screening would occur prior to someone coming into the building and we could actually turn someone away,” said Ms.Stein
While Irvington High School has made many changes to security regarding the outside measures, statistics show that potential threats are often internal (i.e. a student attending the school). To try and ease these worries, the district has partnered with the PTSA, IEF, iASK, and CAB to develop school assemblies and class curriculum that addresses issues like mental health.
“Mental health continues to be an area of great focus. Our proposed Master Schedule, while addressing many potential enhancements, specifically looks to enhance wellness for all students,” said Mr. Cohen.
Junior Janeeta Shaukat has taken it upon herself to closely examine and learn as much as she can about mental health. Shaukat has been trying to raise awareness about mental health in Irvington High School through her efforts in the Positive Impact Club.
Shaukat, accompanied by other students and Irvington High School’s two psychologists (Ms. Kelly Murphy and Ms. Noreen Sabia) attended Westchester’s “Open Minds” summit on January 10th. This day was dedicated to mental health awareness and de-stigmatization. After gaining inspiration from the event, Shaukat and the Irvington High School psychologists hope to create a club to gain an even better understanding and to create a space to talk about mental health.
“I just want to help create an environment in which all students are able to get the help they need without thinking about what other people will think. Essentially get rid of the stigma that tends to come with mental health,” said Shaukat.
The staff at Irvington High School has also expressed interest in making Irvington High School safer. A union-sponsored committee was created, headed by English teacher Ms. Kim O’Connor, to address security concerns from the teacher and staff perspective.
“The work I do on behalf of teachers and students looks to optimize the current infrastructure for safety. I also remain optimistic that future plans for safety improvements will become a reality,” said Ms.O’Connor.
Each building has a building level safety team and are working with their consultants in making sure the staff are trained in the event of an emergency situation.
“Our staff has said we understand it, but we’d really like to do it more, to get more training to understand more about what our rule is. We’ve had a big culture shift,” said Ms. Stein.
