Dear Students, Families and Staff,
There are truly no words to describe the horror that has played out this week in Maine. Any incident of this type naturally raises questions and concerns. As I wrote to you yesterday, the safety of our schools is always at the top of our minds. Our District School Safety Team is constantly preparing and training to respond to incidents such as this and to prevent them from occurring.
At our schools, we utilize a combination of physical measures – such as door access controls, surveillance cameras and training. Each year, school staff take part in the active shooter response training known as ALERRT. Additionally, schools carry out drills with students to prepare to respond to such situations. We also work closely with the Manchester Police Department, which stations School Resource Officers (SROs) at all of our middle and high schools. Those SROs also provide coverage for assigned elementary schools.
With all of that said, we are constantly working to improve the security of our schools. Thanks to substantial grants we have received in 2023, we are moving forward with projects to support physical security upgrades and to identify and address behavioral issues and threats. These grants include:
- $1.9 million to improve or add access controls, surveillance and alerting systems across the District
- $2.4 million to implement a District-wide emergency alerts system
- $1.5 million received by Manchester Police to build tools and teams to assess and respond to threats in schools
- $7.6 million to fully build out our student supports model known as MTSS-B (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Behavior)
These grant awards reflect a great amount of collaborative work to better prepare us to mitigate and/or respond to threats. Our District Safety Team will continue their work to research, mitigate and plan as we hold student and staff safety as a high priority.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Chmiel Gillis, Ed.D
Superintendent of Schools