Tonight (2018-05-08) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
While there were other agenda items, there was really only one topic tonight: The Safety and Security Review, in response to the threat of attack for Friday April, 27th. TLDR; There was no attack, nobody died. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an opportunity to learn.
This is the first time I can recall a presentation before the ‘Public Comment’ portion of the agenda. Likely done to manage flow of the meeting, which worked. By the time the review was done, the meeting was past the two hour mark and the audience had left. After an opportunity to comment to the Board, as well as a more personal conversation with the various building principals, so all was good there.
Overall, I thought the presentation was well done. I found out Bill is the Director of Security, in addition to the other titles he has. For anyone that is interested in reading it, a PDF of his report is available online.
The glaring flaw I always see in this sort of plan is it is setup for delaying and fleeing from threats, but has no method of stopping threats. As Bill talked through the procedures, he pointed to a few points at which “help is on the way”. Which is good and all, but as the saying goes ‘when every second counts, help is minutes away’.
Which ties into how the 2nd amendment doesn’t apply on campus, unless you are a registered law enforcement officer. And while Gene (Superintendent) acknowledged students have 4th amendment rights, those don’t apply when the need for a threat assessment comes up. Raises questions about the balance between freedom and security. It seems to me like an increasing number of freedoms are being sacrificed, in the name of security, while the frequency of attacks is increasing. It feels to me like the approach is backwards. I believe, if our freedoms/rights were respected, the problem of attacks on campus would go away (or at least become less frequent). Of course, we need a school to be brave enough to try it to find out. And fear can be a powerful motivator (too often in the wrong direction).
I got the sense from the Board, that while things went well enough, there was room for improvement. In particular, it sounded like the community was not happy with how the district communicated information about the situation. Yet, the district gave 4+ interviews, sent 5+ emails to everyone on their mailing list, left at least one voicemail with everyone whose number they have, on their website, etc. In addition to a plethora of other communications to more selected groups (all high school parents, twitter feeds, etc). Unfortunately, this is one of those times you can’t make everyone happy.
On top of that, one of the ~60 students that was in the bathroom in question posted a picture of the threat to at least one social media service. Ironically enough, the anecdote was shared that another school district saw the image and almost closed their district, in the believe it was their school being threatened.
One of those in the audience asked how he, as someone who doesn’t have students in the district, can get on the various contact lists so that he is informed of significant events. The answer was to email Rhonda (Assistant to the Superintendent) and ask to be placed on the list. I would suspect that Leah (Public Information Specialist) would also be a good contact person here. Not sure how exactly to phrase that request, but if you say something like ‘I would like to receive email, voicemail, and/or texts when messages are sent out to all parents’ then you will probably get added to the appropriate systems. I’m pondering doing that myself.
From where I was observing, I was impressed by how Gene (and the rest of the staff) handled the situation. Excitement is not fun, and often dangerous, but they did their jobs and it seems to have worked out well enough.
Outside of that topic, the rest of the meeting was a quick whirlwind of short items and tabled items, with one exception. Next Tuesday is Election Day for the School District. Go Vote.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 8, 2018 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
As has become the norm for this group, Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page.