There is a change.org petition being circulated by “Concerned Parents of the NNHS Community” among Newton parents and others calling for more security at our high schools.
The wording is vague but includes:
Let’s stop protecting our image and concerns of disrupting students daily routines. We can have it all and should make it happen.
We can’t trust research! Let’s lock all doors and demand Security be put in place.
The same group is planning a
Protest at Saftey Meeting tomorrow 6:00 Ed Center.
School Committee member Margaret Albright answered several questions brought up in the thread.
Both Newton North and Newton South have open campus for students starting their second semester in 10th grade. Policies and procedures are the same at both schools. Open campus means that students are free to come and go during the day and not that the campus is open to non-students or anyone who wishes to come into the building.
Each high school has one dedicated resource officer and each school also has four campus aides. There are cameras in public areas and hallways at both high schools as well as on the exterior and in the parking lots.
There are two resources officers assigned to the elementary and middle schools. One covers Day, Bigelow and north side elementary schools and the other covers Oak Hill, Brown and south side elementary schools. Thank you to the Newton Police for providing four, trained youth officers as resource officers for our schools.
What do you think about security at our high schools? Should it be tighter? Armed security guards? Metal detectors?
“We can’t trust research!” OMG. That alone hurts their cause. Identical statements are uttered by anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers.
Regulate & restrict guns. Don’t turn our schools into prisons..
From Masslive
5 reasons metal detectors in schools are a bad idea, according to security expert
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/05/5_reasons_metal_detectors_in_school_are_bad.html
Security theater.
Marti Bowen, I see you are the person who wrote this article. You need to check your resources before you print someone’s name. This could of been something that could harm someone’s standing in their community, however, this petition is something we totally agree with there needs to be armed police officers at the schools, it is very sad that it has come to this and if they do agree to supply armed police at the schools let’s hope they are NOT like the officers in Florida, that chose to hide rather then “serve and protect.” But getting back to my point and reason for this comment. My 31 year old son, Robert Earle-Coppola was not the person who started this petition, I believe he signed on behalf of his cousins request, Bobby is not a parent as of yet and has no children in the Newton school system. If this had been something that was negative, you falsely named someone. I guess that is where the name “Fake News” comes in. However, I am quite sure he does not mind having his names mentioned because this is a good cause and in the world we live in today, sadly we need our children and grandchildren protected. But this is not the person who initiated the petition and I think you need to correct it.
And a comment I would like to make about this petition. Yes, sadly we need extra security in our schools today, but the first thing that needs to be done is schools need to be locked. I raised 4 kids in Newton, two went to private school, two went to public. The private schools the doors locked right as the first bell rang and unlocked at dismissal. You needed to ring the front bell in order to gain entrance into the school. The office would see who you were on the camera and you would speak through the intercom. Even if you were a parent, if you did NOT have a reason to be there, you could not gain excess. The Newton Public schools, first and foremost should stop the open campus, people come and go through those doors by the 100’s. There is no one to answer too. I believe the front offices need to be on the first floor by the doors and you state your business before entering. Having an armed officer at the high school level would be useless and if I am correct, I believe the youth officers are housed out of the high schools, so you do have an armed officer on duty. My son went to Williams and you can walk through the front door of the school and instead of going through the double doors and walk down the hall to the main office, you could walk right in and walk up to the second floor with out anyone seeing you. That is NOT safe. The same with Brown Middle school, you walk into the front doors and you need to turn right to go down the hallway to the main office, but you can also turn left and walk straight down the hall and up or down the stairs. That all needs to be restructured. I wonder if these new monstrosity new schools they have built, built them with the main office on the first floor at the main entrance. My kids have been out of school for awhile now and maybe the way it was has changed, but I doubt it, Williams and Brown have not been touched. But that should be a MUST. And if you do have armed officers at the schools, they are right there at the front office to see who enters the school. To many doors unlocked all around the schools.
Jacquie Earle Coppola,
His name is attached to the petition asking people to support it. That makes it public knowledge. The facts that he is your 31 yo son and may not want his name published on this blog are not relevant.
Marti Bowen, did you NOT state and I quote, “The petitioner of is Robert Earle-Coppola”? He signed the petition he is NOT the petitioner and NOT the one who started the movement. If you want to write a correct article, then check your facts and find out who started the petition. You also stated that “Newton Parents….” he is NOT a Newton parent. And yes, it is public knowledge when someone signs a petition, did you name any others who signed it. Like I said, this is a good cause and something needs to be done to keep our children as safe as possible and make them feel safe, whether it is by having armed police at school or locking down the schools, I am just pointing out the fact that you wrote, “the petitioner” and he is NOT the petitioner, he has been getting calls, messsges, and emails all day from people and had no idea what was going on until someone sent him a copy of your article. People are making suggestions and asking him questions and he only signed the petition, he has nothing to do with trying to implement it. He looks ridiculous when he can not answer questions about what is or has been done and taking people’s suggestions. That should all be directed to the right person, the person who initiated the group and petition. Like I said, he does not mind his name being associated with the petition but feels that people’s suggestions and questions should be going to the people “who know the details” and can answer them.
Marti, I don’t see anything on the Change.org petition that indicates who is behind it other than “Concerned Parents of the NNHS Community”. I’m assuming by “petitioner” you mean the person who started the petition – different people may be circulating the link to the petition, but that doesn’t make them the “petitioner”. I don’t know why you are making that assumption, but you should really correct it. The petition is clearly anonymous.
Thank you Tricia, my point exactly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GEy_SoYZeS0&feature=youtu.be
Would you feel safe? Honestly?
We are asking that doors be LOCKED! KEEP ALL STUDENTS & FACULTY SAFE! LOCK THE DOORS!
Stop putting pressure on our teachers let them teach & hire the appropriate trained Security. The research we refer to, which was stated on a letter regarding Safety & Security from our Superintendent 2/26/18:
“Research demonstrates that some of the most important safety work we do is the support of the social and emotional health of our students.”
ITS NOT ENOUGH! LOCK OUR DOORS & KEEP ALL SCHOOLS SAFE!
First, we should not waste effort on schemes to prevent mass shootings. We need to make decisions based on evidence, not on emotion. The probability of a child being struck by lightning is 4 times the probability of a child dying from the discharge of a firearm in a school. When school shootings occur they get a lot of media attention, but if our goal is to protect our children, we are better looking elsewhere. For example, let’s invest in starting high school later. This will have more acute beneficial impact on students’ health. If you are interested in high school start times, email me at [email protected].
Second, for unrelated reasons we should eliminate the “open campus” fiasco. The NPS uses the term “open campus” as though it is designed to educate children. The sales pitch is that students learn to be responsible. In reality, the open campus is way for NPS to avoid accountability. Teacher absenteeism is high and NPS responds by canceling classes. The “open campus” allows students to stroll around the neighborhood–go to Starbucks, grab a cigarette, and do other things that I don’t want my kids to do when they should be in school learning.
I have a student at South and at Brown. They were at at unlocked Angier that was finally locked. Brown locks the door. I welcome the locked doors and hope South and North lock the doors. Each high school student has a student ID which could be used to swipe open certain locked doors. I like the idea of teaching the kids safety, including locking the door. We lock our house and I work in a locked office building and buzz people into our office.
It won’t stop a shooter, but it certainly makes the common criminal think twice. Right now any potential criminal can walk into South or North and stay in the bathroom and assault/rob a child. It can happen today. Lock the doors. Please lock the doors as STEP ONE.
Step two is to care for our kids and stop the insane pressure. I hear the talk when I go to parent events, but some teachers are still loading our kids up with work. My son has one teacher who gives homework M-Th and has a quiz/test on Friday and gives the kids the weekend (and vacations) off. I love her philosophy. But she is the only one. Often vacations are “homework free” but the teacher makes it due Tuesday instead of Monday. Same thing – the kid is working over vacation, and lets face it, my kid doesn’t decide his vacation destiny. Sometimes we visit grandparents and bring no computers because the idea is to connect with family. Try to tell that to your high school teacher.
Step three – don’t isolate those with mental health issues. They need to be treated with real professionals and not isolated. And peers need to accept others with differences and not ignore them. We as a community need to realize that this is a problem in our society. Don’t shun people who are suffering with depression.
Step four – my daughter at Brown has been there since September and has not had one lock down drill. She knows what to do, but going through the motions helps. We have our kids practice fire drills. Our kids need to practice lock down drills. We need the police to help us and observe the lock down drill and let our teachers and administrators where they can improve. Active shooters are a real danger and we need our kids skilled in how to leave a building fast or how to shelter in place safely. I know Angier was in lock down during bank robberies years ago. I haven’t asked my South student if they practice lock downs, but they should. At least twice a year. And it shouldn’t be the principal running it.
NPS needs to do more for our students for safety.
One resource officer in high school is NOT enough. I don’t want more guns at school, and I don’t want teachers having guns. I don’t want metal detectors. I want our kids educated in how to survive an active shooter. I want our teachers and students behind locked doors.
Please write to the Newton School Committee with your concerns.
@Newton Mom, you say that we need to lock the doors to protect against the “common criminal.” But I’m curious, how much outside crime happens in our schools? The doors have been unlocked for some time, is there a wave of unreported outside crime?
If yes, then let’s look at the statistics and hear from the police about how to prevent it. If not… why are we locking the doors? What are we afraid of?
Wake up everybody. It’s time to take commonsense action. We are no different than anyone else in this country. Those who argue against simply locking doors and being thoughtful as to how we protect our children while at school, will surely be to blame if something happens here.
Like many of you, I’ve been in and out of the schools for several years. Earlier they were not locked, and recently some additional doors have been locked, especially at the elementary schools.
My experience is that you stand outside and ring the bell, but the person who is supposed to unlock it isn’t always there. That’s because their job entails more than monitoring the door. This is especially true when it comes to aftercare programs.
So what does happen? Usually you stand there until someone comes out of the building and opens the door. Then you go in. So all the lock did was to delay getting in the building. No one checks an ID.
What HAS worked is diligence on the part of the teachers and staff. I have been stopped and asked why I’m in a school. That is something that is easier to implement and makes security part of the system. Pushing all the students through a single point of entry may feel better, but it doesn’t add to the security. They’ll just end up walking up to doors and banging on the windows until someone on the inside opens the door. That doesn’t help security at all, it simply delays entry.
Delay is good!
Staff members should greet and challenge every person who seeks entry through a single, prominent school entryways and there should be locking systems on all classroom doors. They should also use existing technology to monitor all doors and exterior school areas.
Of course this helps security.
When parents go to an office building during the day in downtown Boston, they have to go through metal detectors and show an ID before they (or visitors) are allowed into the building. How come we don’t protect our children the same way?
Only in the statehouse do I go through a metal detector when walking in. But the ID-checks in office buildings are little more than security theater. It doesn’t increase safety, the people at the desks have little power to do much other than monitor.
I laugh when going to Fenway and they wave a wand over me. They only check my front and it doesn’t even beep when it flies over my wristwatch. This isn’t real security, it’s there to make people think it’s safer. It’s marketing.
Even this petition asks you to ignore the research. Why? Because the research and the facts indicate that this is a waste of time and money. Creating a fearful environment in our schools in which all doors are locked and students shelter in their rooms is a lousy learning environment. What’s next? Steel, bulletproof doors that clank when they close?
Also, what kind of message are sending to our children when we tell them to ignore research? How is that helping education in any way?
We are having a very odd technical problem editing Marti’s post….something that’s I’ve never seen before here in all these years. Our IT guy is investigating. If we can’t fix it we will have to unpublish it, something we don’t want to do because it would mean losing all the comments.
What Greg said.
Armed security guards wont make our students feel or be safer. That will just introduce guns into our schools. I am not sure but I don’t think the resource officers are armed.
Locking high school doors and giving pass keys to the students will result in keys being lost and passed around but will not keep them safe? Lock down drills can backfire and create more fear to feed the into obsession of thinking anyone can completely control students’ safety.
It’s impossible to anticipate every type of incident. You can spin your wheels attempting to find a solution for any circumstance but you’ll just drive yourself crazy and still the unexpected will happen. Fear is the driver but not the answer. Holding others responsible if anything happens is not productive.
The only measure presented that maintains a modicum of safety is having to sign in if you are not a student, teacher or a member of the staff. But even that gives a false since of security.
I am not sure what difference who posted the petition? We are “Concerned Parents”, do you actually need names? For what reason exactly to know who is seeking some change so that we may call them names like “anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers”.
No wonder we are so adamant that the Social Emotional Learning Concept is needed for our kids. Let’s start at home and teach our children some basics, its very simple “Respect Everyone” , “Listen to Everyone” , “Reach out to Someone”.
Mr. Coppola thank you for posting the petition, we are sorry this caused grief for simply wanting to be involved in making a change in our schools, as a tax paying citizen in the City of Newton. Hopefully this article will stay up.
The petition is simple LOCK ALL DOORS and figure it out. Is time really more valuable than safety?
I didn’t CALL them “anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers,” though. However, the denying of research is a tactic of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers. There are so many ways they can express concern and come up with ideas for a safer school, but this group is failing on multiple fronts.
@Marti
Part of the problem in the fake news era, is the prevalence of non-apology apologies. You apologized for confusion. That’s not the issue. You made a mistake, and should being saying it as such.
PS The post should come down until it can be rectified. I don’t see anything of sufficient value in the comments that merits false accusations to remain standing. Wrong choice V14 moderators.
Attacks on schools are horrific tragedies that in today’s world we now all must fear. Our school system, like every other private and public one in the US, is trying to figure out how to react. There will be different approaches and opinions from our community, to be sure. Changes will take discussions and time.
But facing this threat, this ultimate act of incivility and violence and senselessness, should be handled *with* civility, *with* thoughtfulness, and *with* reason, together.
Fear and accusations and personal back-and-forth and ALL CAPS and “must do something” are all completely understandable. But they aren’t going to get us to the best solution, which we all understand will be an imperfect one even in the best case.
This discussion thread is not “our better angels”. Face to face forums are probably better to talk these issues out.
The ability of an individual to project hate and inflict pain onto innocents has never been greater; it has never been harder to counter. Our best hope lies not just in what good people do, but in how we do it.
Paul, I edited the post hours ago immediately after the glitch was fixed.
“No matter what you try to do by just hardening the target, we’ve learned that having the armed officers isn’t necessarily going to stop it,” says Matthew Mayer at Rutgers. “Having the metal detector or the locked doors isn’t going to stop it. The hard work is a lot more effort. You’d better start thinking in a more comprehensive manner about prevention instead of reacting.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/07/590877717/experts-say-here-s-how-to-prevent-the-next-school-shooting?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social
Jo-Louise, thank you for posting this plan. It is the best way to move forward.
Security was part of the high school principals’ presentation at Monday’s school committee meeting. You can watch that presentation on NewTV. The district-wide safety team which includes police, fire, health dept. and others have been working with a security consultant since the fall to update all safety protocols. The safety team meets monthly and has many things in place that aren’t readily apparent. Because of this, the district will be sharing a safety FAQ in the very near future.
The point others raise about probabilities is relevant. Let’s not let the fear of something exceedingly unlikely distract us from the clear & present danger of depressed, anxious children. Let’s let the schools continue their appropriate & effective focus on making sure our kids are learning to support each other, not distract them by demanding they create fortresses.
I was really gratified to get the emails from Superintendent Fleishman & South Principal Stembridge, which both emphasized the real security need: for everyone to be vigilant about isolation and depression, and to support kids who suffer. Their priorities are absolutely correct. I really hope these minority voices don’t make them wobble in their commitment to these priorities.
Matthew Miller shared this about the recent School Committee meeting.
This update is for the SC meeting which occurred on 03/05/2018:
1). In his report, Superintendent Fleishman noted the tragic recent school shootings in Florida and he explained NPS has been working on a variety of security and mental health measures to increase student safety. He also pointed out an article written on the subject by NPS Assistant Superintendent of Student Services, Karen Shmukler.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/opinions/hard-schools-arent-the-answer-to-shootings-shmukler-opinion/index.html
2). The High School Principals’ update was presented by Henry Turner (NNHS), Joel Stembridge (NSHS) and Toby Romer (Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education). Please see the attached presentation. Key elements include information regarding Safety/Security, High School Start Times and Information Technology. https://drive.google.com/file/d/178BmBh4NsTFm5LTsty2RyQ_ydL_k3QJN/view?usp=sharing
3). Our English Language Learner program leaders, Allison Levit and Sara Hamerla, walked us through the details of Newton Public School’s ELL program. In addition to providing services to over 1,500 students, the program has received recognition for their outstanding original teaching materials.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b_Uw8AXaffxfM6_uJliO6r2IjC_zK9Ql/view?usp=sharing
4). Two updates came from our current SAWG (Student Assignment Working Group). In addition to scenarios presented at the last SC meeting, two new scenarios were added: A3 and G2. They also highlighted an upcoming Public Hearing on April 25th at 6:30PM during which residents can provide feedback.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o9_4S6U_kZDiJZFc_T6vJd4y58H1sXZv/view?usp=sharing
We hope you have found this summary useful. You can access all School Committee meeting documents via the NPS website (https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/domain/69).
Additionally, if you are interested in watching an SC meeting from home or a recorded meeting, you can obtain access via http://www.newtv.org.
As always, we are ready, willing and able to answer any questions or discuss any concerns you may have. Please feel free to contact us via the information below.
Sincerely,
Newton School Committee
[email protected]