Nichols And Sag Harbor School Board Members Discuss District Safety Protocols At Latest Meeting

In the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, school districts around the country have been reevaluating their safety procedures, considering possible changes and upgrades, and making efforts to inform parents and family members of the school policies when it comes to security.

Superintendent Jeff Nichols did that at the most recent Sag Harbor Board of Education meeting on Monday night, June 6, with a slideshow presentation that outlined some of the protocols and safeguards in place at the Sag Harbor Learning Center, the Elementary School, and the Middle-High School. He also shared a few ideas about potential upgrades that the board might want to consider as a way to enhance the security measures already in place.

Speaking about school security can be a thorny issue. Administrators and school officials must balance the need and obligation to provide parents with information about the measures the school has in place to keep staff and students safe — and, in the wake of a mass shooting, when emotions are raw, provide the extra reassurance parents are seeking — but also must be careful not to divulge too many specific details about how the security procedures and infrastructure work, because it could potentially compromise safety, especially when discussed in a public forum like a board meeting.

Nichols also acknowledged that how far the district should go when it comes to putting certain measures in place to keep students safe can be a challenging calculus as well.

“This is really a tough one for me, because you have a continuum, and you don’t necessarily know where to land on that continuum because the issue is so complicated,” he said, largely in reference to the idea of having an armed police officer at the school — a school resource officer — on a daily basis. “The school is one setting, and you have to take it seriously, but do you also put up those same parameters and guardrails in Agawam Park when there’s a concert, or at Coopers Beach during a summer day, or anywhere else? Because what we’ve learned about these shootings is they’re happening everywhere. So that’s what’s disconcerting about it. Trying to strike that right balance is pretty difficult.”

Some East End districts — like Westhampton Beach and East Hampton — have a school resource officer, but the Sag Harbor School District does not. Other districts, like East Quogue and Hampton Bays, share an SRO, meaning that officer is not at the same school every day of the week but rotates around. Nichols emphasized that the district has had a great working relationship with the Sag Harbor Village Police Department for many years, both under the guidance of current Chief A.J. McGuire and former Chief Tom Fabiano, but said that thus far, he has been unconvinced that adding an SRO would make any kind of measurable difference in terms of safety.

“The reading I’ve done suggests that those programs haven’t really, from an empirical evidence standpoint, improved school safety,” he said. “I’d be open to considering it if I’d seen any evidence suggesting that.”

Board President Brian DeSesa suggested reaching out to the East Hampton and Westhampton Beach school districts for more information on their SRO programs. Board Vice President Sandi Kruel pointed out that most of the district’s current security staff members are retired police officers.

“I think it’s a decision for the community to make,” Nichols said, adding that the board and the community are ultimately in charge of deciding how to proceed in that regard.

After going through a presentation updating parents and other attendees at the meeting regarding the school’s current safety protocols and systems, there was some discussion of possible upgrades that could be made, including enhancing or upgrading security vestibules at the three buildings, and possibly upgrading door locking and access systems both inside and at the entrances to the buildings.

During his presentation, Nichols pointed out that he had just started working in the district when the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado, changed the landscape around gun violence in schools, and that since that time, during his tenure in the Sag Harbor School District, he has almost lost count of the number of school shootings that have devastated the nation, from the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 to Sandy Hook in 2012, and Parkland in 2018. He pointed out that over the years, the district has made numerous upgrades to its security practices, and has also increased the number of guidance counselors, social workers and school psychologists on staff, and that the urge to pay even closer attention grows stronger in the wake of every mass shooting.

Two moms with children in the district spoke during the public comment portion. One parent read a letter that was co-signed by more than 35 parents and grandparents of children in the district, demanding more sensible gun laws, enhanced background checks and investments in mental health care that they believe will help alleviate the country’s persistent gun violence epidemic. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced sweeping gun reform laws a day later, but similar changes at the federal level have been basically non-existent for decades.

Another parent, Michele Liot, expressed her disappointment in a lack of any correspondence to parents from the school in the aftermath of the Uvalde tragedy.

“I wanted to hear something and know what was happening and how it was being addressed or not addressed,” she said, adding that she didn’t necessarily feel one approach or the other was right or wrong, but wanted to know so she could react accordingly and be prepared for any potential conversations with her children at home.

Nichols had originally planned to share with residents a detailed presentation of the latest renderings for the proposed capital improvement project at Mashashimuet Park — which residents will be asked to approve in a bond referendum vote, likely sometime in September — but said he decided to push that presentation back to the next board meeting, set for June 27, because the renderings weren’t complete enough yet. Those plans will be presented at the next meeting by the district architects, H2M, as well as Ed Hollander, another architect working on the project.

Two long-time teachers in the Pierson Middle School — science teacher Joe Amato and math teacher Jim Kinnier — will retire at the conclusion of the school year. Amato, an East Quogue resident, and Kinnier, who lives in Sag Harbor, have both been teaching in the district since the early 1990s, and both are long tenured coaches as well, with Kinnier leading the girls varsity cross country team for many years, and Amato coaching the varsity boys cross country team.

New York State Assemblyman and 1971 Pierson High School graduate Fred W. Thiele Jr. was on hand at the meeting to present the Pierson varsity boys basketball team with a proclamation from the State Assembly and Senate, commending the squad on both its impressive season, with wins in both the Suffolk County and Long Island Class C titles, and a run to the state final four, and the garnering of the state sportsmanship award. Thiele — who also played basketball at Pierson, but made a few jokes about how he and his teammates competed during “the down years” between the great teams of the 1960s and the state championship winning team of 1978 — commended the players for a job well done.