The events that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut in December were unimaginable.
This situation too harshly reminds us why we need to have safety/lockdown procedures and why it is important to review them regularly.
In December, BRPS formed a new school safety committee that is made up of school staff and several representatives from our local law enforcement and other emergency management personnel. This committee has met multiple times and continues to meet to review and update our school safety/lockdown procedures and our district crisis plan. We will continue to meet to discuss and review our procedures in order to ensure we are providing the safest learning environment we can, for all of our students.
This committee has also done walk-throughs of our schools and is looking to see what changes need to made in order to make our buildings and their entrances more secure. As a result, we have started investigating the potential of putting buzzer/intercom systems at the entries of all of our schools. We are also exploring the possibility of creating secure vestibule entries into our elementary schools and our middle school. To that end, our Board of Education has recently passed a resolution to put a “sinking fund” millage on the May ballot, which would allow us to have the financial means to accomplish these enhancements more quickly. We will be sharing more specifics about the sinking fund in the next couple of months.
Our schools are safe places for our students. We have well-trained staff that care deeply for every child, and we will continue to meet with our staff and our safety committee to make every effort to ensure the safety of each of our kids. What happened in Newtown is unthinkable, but the heroes were the teachers and other school personnel that were prepared to handle such a situation.
