What is Stockbridge Valley Central School District doing to ensure the safety of our students, staff and administrators during the school day?

In terms of our facilities, our doors (tunnels and auditorium) are locked throughout the day and have video cameras, requiring everyone to be visually verified and manually buzzed in before entering the building. All visitors must report to either the Business Office or Nurse's Office and sign in before heading to their destination. If you are visiting our school for any reason, please be cognizant of these procedures to help create a climate of safety in our school.

Let's not forget, a culture of safety goes beyond facilities. We routinely conduct various safety and emergency procedures with students and staff, including fire drills, lockout drills and early release drills. We also conduct a variety of training for our staff so they can be prepared in an emergency situation; these trainings include DASA (Dignity for All Students Act, which addresses bullying issues), mental health awareness, emergency preparedness, and general threat assessment procedures. We try to reinforce with everyone that if they see something, they should say something to an administrator or trusted adult.

We utilize our district website, School Messenger alert system and our district newsletter to share important safety and emergency information and notifications, as appropriate. We also utilize the news media and social media, as appropriate.

Moving forward, we are looking at increasing our security procedures in a variety of ways, including greater overlap with local law enforcement, new visitor procedures, a single point of entry system and some facilities improvements. We will keep you updated about these changes as they progress.

These added measures are not being done in response to any specific threats to the safety of our school, students or staff, and it is not my intent to scare you or create panic. In fact, my intent is just the opposite. If we are all aware of what is being done currently and where we are headed, we can all work together to ensure we foster the best possible learning and working environment for everyone.