Posted: Saturday, December 15, 2012 6:35 pm | Updated: 9:48 pm, Sat Dec 15, 2012.
Posted on December 15, 2012
Local school officials pledged to continue to reinforce and re-evaluate their security measures in light of the mass shooting Friday at an elementary school in Connecticut.
“(We want) to make sure we are doing all that is reasonably possible to keep our children safe,” Centennial Superintendent Jennifer Cressman said on the district’s website.
As a precaution, Centennial officials increased patrols at all schools on Friday to make sure all safety protocols were being followed, the superintendent said.
“There have not been any threats at any of our facilities,” she emphasized.
Centennial and other area districts posted information on their websites about how to discuss the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School with children. School officials asked parents to encourage their kids to let an adult know if they are frightened, deeply sad or concerned about their safety.
“It is important to reassure children that the adults in their lives are doing everything they can to make their school, home, and neighborhood safe for them,” Pennsbury officials said on the district’s website.
Counseling supports will be available for students if needed when they get back to school on Monday, Pennsbury spokesman Ann Langtry said.
In addition, school principals are talking over the weekend with teachers and other school staff members about “closely monitoring our students in the wake of this tragedy and the ongoing news coverage,” Langtry said.
Officials in neighboring Morrisville are taking similar steps.
“It’s important to make the children feel safe, without making them afraid to come to school,” Superintendent William Ferrara said Saturday in a written statement.
Ferrara will be available to discuss the district’s safety plan at 7 p.m. on Wednesday during his regularly scheduled superintendent’s advisory meeting at Morrisville Intermediate/High School, spokeswoman Pat Wandling said.
“(We want) to make sure we are doing all that is reasonably possible to keep our children safe,” Centennial Superintendent Jennifer Cressman said on the district’s website.
“There have not been any threats at any of our facilities,” she emphasized.
Centennial and other area districts posted information on their websites about how to discuss the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School with children. School officials asked parents to encourage their kids to let an adult know if they are frightened, deeply sad or concerned about their safety.
“It is important to reassure children that the adults in their lives are doing everything they can to make their school, home, and neighborhood safe for them,” Pennsbury officials said on the district’s website.
Counseling supports will be available for students if needed when they get back to school on Monday, Pennsbury spokesman Ann Langtry said.
In addition, school principals are talking over the weekend with teachers and other school staff members about “closely monitoring our students in the wake of this tragedy and the ongoing news coverage,” Langtry said.
Officials in neighboring Morrisville are taking similar steps.
“It’s important to make the children feel safe, without making them afraid to come to school,” Superintendent William Ferrara said Saturday in a written statement.
Ferrara will be available to discuss the district’s safety plan at 7 p.m. on Wednesday during his regularly scheduled superintendent’s advisory meeting at Morrisville Intermediate/High School, spokeswoman Pat Wandling said.
19 comments:
We can't get parking corrected. Security secshmurity...
Teachers have advanced college degrees? Train and issue them weapons and/or install metal detectors everywhere. At this point it doesn't seem like a choice? Tax dollars or not? Life and death is the issue.
Really? Because the teachers are college educated that makes them trained commandos?
Is Pat Wandling still a paid staffer of the Morrisville School District? I know a quick way to save $25,000 dollars.
Arm the kids with Pat Wandling's salary.
Tragic and all too common.
I hope all the NRA members reading this are happy. YOU helped this happen. I hope Mike Fitzpatrick is happy because HE helped this happen. All the people and the politicians they support that stand in the way of common sense gun control should be overjoyed, because THEY helped this happen.It's going to to take a lot of soap to wash these little childrens blood off their hands.
The NRA is not about the 2nd amendment, it's an industry lobbying group whose sole purpose is to sell murder weapons.
Hope you're all happy with your results.
such stupididity, the only blood on anyones hands is that of the killer! nobody can stop a mad man or mad woman, if they want to cause harm they will find a way and always do. I am not for guns but please do not put the blood of this horrific event on someone else, that is a ridiculous statement
Sorry to say but some of the blood is on the hands of the nra the right to own a gun and the right to own a gun that's only use is to kills large numbers of people are two different things.
I'm sorry to say the nra has yet to learn that.
Our gun and violence laden dog eat dog society and abhorrent mental health care system don't help.
If you can't even spell "stupidity" perhaps you should stay off the interwebs.
Idiot.
Blaming guns for things always seems like the easy answer to me. A gun is an inanimate object. If there were no guns, it would be something else, a knife, or if you're looking for more damage, a bomb. I cannot imagine the length of a list detailing what inanimate objects can do harm to a person or a group of people. Although the common denominator every time would be the person using the object. It's much easier to blame the inanimate object than it is to blame the person holding. In blaming the person there would have to be an admitting of something wrong, wrong with our society that would require actually doing something to correct it. We would have to change media standards, healthcare standards, parental standards, etc, and so on. This isn't going to happen. Lawmakers are not going to tackle any of that and will instead talk about what needs to be done with the inanimate object because it's an easier conversation with a lot of boasting and little end result.
Could you 2 settle this with a duel?
What do you think?: which MSD officials and teachers should be armed w/ M-4 carbine assault rifles to deter these tragedies in the future???
I hear that Mrs. Eperjesi has been tasked with sentry duty while fortress MHS is upgraded. I'm not minimizing Sandy Hook but let's not go totally overboard either. Short of armed guards, no security system would have kept out that wack job.
I agree 100% with the comment above. When a tragedy occurs everyone is on board with big change. A month goes by and its back to normal. Ms. B always has the cheif of police in her office so we are already prepared and we were proactive. Ms. B is an inovator, lets hire armed security pay the teachers less. Barb wire the entrances and set up mine fields in the halls. Get real this happens because of 1 crazy person and it is not going to be a daily event in the USA schools.
NRA calls for armed police officer in every school
By PHILIP ELLIOTT | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's largest gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings."
The National Rifle Association broke its silence on last week's shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 children and staff dead.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," the group's top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, said at a Washington news conference.
LaPierre said "the next Adam Lanza," the man responsible for last week's mayhem, is planning an attack on another school.
"How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark," LaPierre said. "A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?"
He blamed video games, movies and music videos for exposing children to a violent culture day in and day out. "In a race to the bottom, many conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society, by bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty right into our homes," LaPierre said.
He refused to take any questions after speaking. Though security was tight, two protesters were able to interrupt LaPierre's speech, holding up signs that blamed the NRA for killing children. Both were escorted out, shouting that guns in schools are not the answer.
LaPierre announced that former Rep. Asa Hutchison, R-Ark., will lead an NRA program that will develop a model security plan for schools that relies on armed volunteers.
The 4.3 million-member NRA largely disappeared from public debate after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., choosing atypical silence as a strategy as the nation sought answers after the rampage. The NRA temporarily took down its Facebook page and kept quiet on Twitter.
Since the slayings, President Barack Obama has demanded "real action, right now" against U.S. gun violence and called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants proposals to reduce gun violence that he can take to Congress by January.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would stop people from purchasing firearms from private sellers without a background check. Obama also has indicated he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines.
Many school, union and political leaders say no to NRA proposal
Carolyn Davis, Inquirer Staff Writer
December 22, 2012
A number of school, union, and political leaders in the Philadelphia region were not eager Friday to let the National Rifle Association be their guide on how to protect students and staff from the type of tragedy that occurred last week in a Connecticut school.
A week after a shooter entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and gunned down 20 children and six adults, the NRA announced what it said it saw as the best way to prevent a recurrence "of this unspeakable crime."
The group's suggestion: Put an armed police officer or "properly trained" local volunteers in every school in the nation.
"Guns and armed guards will not help students resolve important issues or problems in their lives," said Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan. "Counselors, nurses, nonteaching assistants, and psychologists provide much more in the way of care and support to our children than armed guards."
The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers were equally adamant.
"Guns have no place in our schools. Period," the groups said in a joint statement. "We must do everything we can to reduce the possibility of any gunfire in schools, and concentrate on ways to keep all guns off school property and ensure the safety of children and school employees."
The NRA's proposal is "a nice concept," but an unlikely one to put into practice because of tight municipal budgets, said Raymond Hayducka, police chief in South Brunswick and president of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.
"In an ideal world, we'd have a lot more police officers. We'd have police officers on every street, but it's just not realistic," he said.
While Camden City schools security guards are not armed, the school board has a working relationship with the city's police department in which armed officers visit schools daily and "pop in and out" as needed, said Gaylen Conley, executive director of district security.
"Having armed officers could be very significant help" in Camden schools, Conley said.
"The Colonial School District has had unarmed security personnel, all former law enforcement professionals, assigned to Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School and Colonial Middle School for a number of years," said district superintendent Maryellen Gorodetzer. "Looking forward, we feel it is critical that there be a focus on mental-health supports and finding the financial resources for them on both the state and national level."
No potential step will be "rejected out of hand" in the West Chester Area School District, said communications program director Rob Partridge.
He emphasized that "there is no single way for preventing these events from occurring."
"We would worry about any one person who makes a statement that there is a specific solution, that there is a shortcut, that there is an easy remedy. All reasonable people realize that's just not the case," Partridge said.
Three Philadelphia elected officials, all Democrats, bluntly rejected the NRA's recommendation.
Some Philadelphia public schools - and some high schools already have city police in them - have an unacceptable level of violence, Mayor Nutter said Friday, but guns for all are not the answer.
The NRA's message "was an insult to the lives of those children" killed in Newtown, Conn., Nutter said. "That we would face the prospects of shoot-outs in our schools, and utilize the precious and declining resources in public education to put armed personnel in every school, is insane."
PART 2 of 2
Philadelphia City Council President Darrell L. Clarke called the proposal "ridiculous. One week after the massacre of tiny children in Newtown, the NRA still refuses to recognize the simple reality that there are too many deadly weapons in the United States."
Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell, chair of the Education Committee, called the proposal "the most foolish thing I've heard all day."
Blackwell said she supported the Second Amendment, but said the rights of gun owners need "to be tempered with common sense and good will."
While not commenting directly on the NRA proposal, Gov. Christie, a Republican, said Friday that posting armed guards outside schools would not make classrooms safer or encourage learning, according to an Associated Press story. Guards would have to be stationed by every classroom, he said, since there are multiple ways to get into a school building.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor, has called for a thoughtful discussion on gun violence, mental illness, and exposure to violent video games.
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