Security measures heightened, discussed in Western Pa. districts after Texas school shooting

Knowing just how much the deadliest elementary school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012 was likely to affect unnerved parents and children throughout Western Pennsylvania, local school officials took a proactive approach Wednesday to reassuring worried students and their families.

Greensburg Salem School Districts posted a video message on its website in the aftermath of Tuesday’s shooting, promising to have additional local and school police in and around schools for the next two weeks. The district will provide counseling services to any requesting student.

“We encourage all students, staff and community members to increase communications with us and the authorities if there are any suspicions of someone being a threat to themselves or others,” the message said. “As always our best preventative measure is our communication and relationships with one another.”

Schools around the country heightened security measures after an 18-year-old gunman slaughtered 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school Tuesday.

Pittsburgh Public Schools operated on a modified lockdown Wednesday as a precaution after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. PPS’s modified lockdown means that only people with an existing appointment can enter school facilities, and field trips and outdoor activities like recess can occur only with clearance from school police.

Though Tuesday’s shooting is bringing school safety concerns to the forefront, it’s always a priority at many local school districts, which have thorough safety policies in place at all times.

Each Pittsburgh public school has a safety team, and all staff receive charts outlining emergency procedures, district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said. All schools conduct lockdown and evacuation drills throughout the year, and teachers and principals have been trained in ALICE, an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate.

The district has 65 security staff, along with 16 school police officers, one chief and two assistant chiefs, Pugh said.

In 2013, the district replaced all classroom doors to ensure they are secure and can lock from the inside. Pugh said the “majority” of the district’s schools are equipped with metal detectors and security personnel.

Plum Borough School District created the Plum Borough School District Police Force in 2019.

“We employ five armed former municipal police officers (one for each building),” said Superintendent Brendan Hyland. “We also have a supervisor of school police who coordinates their ongoing training and supervises their work.”

Each is a certified school resources officer, according to Hyland.

“They have been a blessing and they have become woven into the fiber of our district. We are grateful they are with us,” he said.

Hyland said the Plum Borough School District will not comment on specific safety protocols other than to say the district is “constantly looking to improve the best practices that we currently have in place.”

Highlands and Allegheny Valley school districts use an electronic background check system to screen guests.

“This electronic system verifies any criminal records the visitor may have,” Highlands Superintendent Monique Mawhinney explained.

Highlands also requires visitors at the middle and high schools to go through metal detectors. The district employs two Highland School Police officers and contracts with an outside company to ensure security guards are present at each building, measures that have been in place for several years, Mawhinney said.

Students at all buildings conduct safety drills, Mawhinney said, though she could not provide “any specifics on procedural safety measures.”

“The district takes the safety and security of our students and staff very seriously and is continuously monitoring and adjusting procedures based on needs,” she said.

At Leechburg, students went ahead with a scheduled safety evacuation drill Wednesday morning despite news of the Texas shooting, Superintendent Tiffany Nix said. The district runs drills to practice safety protocols with students and teachers throughout the year.

Two armed guards are on duty each day, with three on special occasions, Nix said. Security guards scan each visitor and any students who arrive late. Their bags are also checked.

Every student goes through a bag check and metal detector daily, Nix said.

At Greater Latrobe, visitors have to check in with the main office, where school officials check identification before allowing them into the building.

“Twenty-five years ago, you pretty much could’ve walked in any door,” Superintendent Mike Porembka said. “It certainly has evolved into a much tighter building.”

Teachers regularly take students through “stay-in-place drills,” where they have a “discussion about an active intruder in the building who’s there to do harm and how they would react depending on where they are in the building,” Porembka said.

The district is looking to ramp up security even more next year, he said, while also providing additional mental health services for students.

It currently has a full-time resource officer, plus additional police officers, he said.

Allegheny Valley also has a resource officer in each building who arrives before students come in and stays until they’ve left, said Larry Pollick, who serves as the school board president.

School buildings have two sets of doors, where visitors need to be buzzed in to enter. School officials check their driver’s licenses and perform a background check through the Raptor system before issuing visitors badges, which they wear in the building and return before leaving.

The schools practice lockdown drills for active shooters, Pollick said. Those drills inspired the district to remove doors with large windows on some classrooms in the high school and replace them with safer doors, he said.

Despite safety protocols and the work of an emergency management committee, Pollick said the district is still looking for improvements to its security efforts. Just last week, the emergency management committee met at Leechburg’s football field to discuss plans for evacuating that facility.

Pollick said he still worries about students opening secondary doors to allow strangers into the building, and he has concerns about safety at bus stops and on school buses.

“It’s unfortunate that school districts have to do so many of these things now to provide safety,” he said.

Penn Hills Superintendent Nancy Hines said the district has a slightly different model in place regarding school resource officers.

“We don’t call that particular position ‘school resource officer,’” Hines explained.

Instead, there are daily openings for two Penn Hills municipal police officers to work at the high school and she said two officers are there almost every day. The school district pays for their overtime services.

“We’re trying to build relationships between students and all of our officers who protect and serve our community,” Hines said.

She said that there are traditional security officers at each of the three schools in the district and it also has “Youth Engagement School Specialists” who follow a contracted services model.

The security officers follow a “contracted services provider arrangement” and are deployed two to each school. It’s the officers’ job to screen visitors and anybody who comes into the schools, monitor surveillance video cameras internally and externally, and do perimeter checks.

Hines said metal detectors have been used at Penn Hills schools since at least the mid-1990s.

Hines said it’s standard that all visitors at Penn Hills Elementary go through metal detectors and a bag search. State-issued IDs or driver’s licenses are checked via an electronic backgrounding system.

Westinghouse Arts Academy in Wilmerding takes a similar approach to security personnel — there is a full-time security officer employed by the school, but no school resource officer per se.

However, even before the school shootings in Texas, there had been discussion about hiring a school resource officer.

As of Jan. 1, Westinghouse has been collaborating with Pitcairn police, who occasionally come in and walk through the building as they did on Wednesday.

Westinghouse Arts Academy principal Kelly Lombardi said anytime she requests a police presence, officers show up, and they have also provided training for the staff.

“At our request or if they are in the area and wanted to, they have access to our building,” Lombardi said. “We all have swipe cards. They have swipe cards and they can come in.”

At the main entrance to the building where the majority of students get off buses and enter, there is a metal detector that they must pass through.

All doors automatically lock and any visitors must first buzz the door at the office entrance, state their business, and then be allowed to enter a secured foyer area. Licenses or IDs are then swiped through a background check system.

“We’re not complacent because sometimes that’s when bad things happen,” Lombardi said.