Vice-President Pat Slagle and School Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker at School Board meeting (August 30, 2022)
The Jamestown School Board passed a new district-wide safety plan at its meeting Tuesday.
New York State requires all school districts adopt a safety plan.
School Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker said School Safety Advisor Brad Meyers did something different with the safety plan this year, “So safety plans are in two parts – one is buildings which is intentionally confidential and the other one is the district which is a little more general. Brad (Meyers) took the concept from the building plans and incorporated them into the district plans. So the district plans supports all of the building plans.”
At a public hearing on the plan, the question was asked which buildings would have school resource officers and if the SROs are part of the safety plan. Meyers said one resource officer will be located at Jamestown High School with the new SRO moving between schools. He said the district uses multiple “red shirt” safety officials at the high school with one “red shirt” at each of the middle schools.
Meyers said, coming out of the Pandemic restrictions, some things will be easier in regards to public safety, “Going back to single point of entry on the schools. Things of that nature, getting back to using the cafeteria collectively, at the same time. Those things actually help us with the security issues and we’ll be continuing to practice with the building level emergency response teams again this year as we did last year.”
Meyers added that the new Resource Officer will be engaged with students at the Middle Schools, including instructional time.
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