Members of the Board of Education, General Counsel and Administration of the Lakewood School District today offered their sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
“Unfortunately, it is a stark reminder of the ever changing world in which we live,” the District said.
The Nonpublic Schools in Lakewood utilize the funding provided by the New Jersey Nonpublic Security Program, which is authorized by the Secure Schools for All Children Act (P.L. 2016, c.49) and signed into law on September 6, 2016.
All Nonpublic Schools are encouraged to place their Security orders with the district as soon as possible.
Allowable Security Expenses include:
- Security Guards
Hardening School Perimeter and Building Entryways:
1. Installation or repair of security fencing on school grounds;
2. Main entrance, exterior door markings, school and way-finding signage;
3. Lighting in and around the building and parking lots;
4. Portable gates that ensure access points between school and joint-use facilities;
5. Construction/equipment to separate bus drop-off/pick-up areas from other vehicular drop-off/pick-up areas;
6. Construction/equipment to separate pedestrian routes from vehicular routes;
7. Stop signs and other traffic calming devices to keep vehicles at a reasonable speed;
8. Bollards for placement along the roadway or curb line in front of the school;
9. Installation of, or improvements to, exterior doors and windows, frames, and/or hardware;
10. Construction of, and/or improvements to, security vestibules2;
11. Ballistic or shatter resistant film for glass doors, windows and other vulnerable areas (e.g., first floor classroom windows, door windows, sidelights, etc.);
12. Exterior windows that can be locked/secured; and
13. Fire-rated blinds, shades or similar devices for doors and windows that can be used during lockdowns.
Building interior
1. Installation of, or improvements to, mechanisms that are designed to prevent entry into the classroom;
2. Adequate lighting in hallways, stairwells, classrooms, etc.;
3. Dedicated servers and/or generators supporting security and/or communication systems;
4. Secure enclosures for utilities;
5. Shut-off switch of the school’s ventilation system and fire alarm system, and the routing of additional shut-off switches to the principal’s office or safe room.
Screening, Surveillance and Alarm Systems
1. ID cards and related systems for students, faculty, staff, and/or visitors
2. Security services: Alarm services, video security surveillance systems, and security guards
3. Access control systems that allow remote locking and unlocking of doors
4. Intercom and fixed cameras for the school’s main entrance and other entrances
5. Parking decals or tag system for all staff and students who park
Metal/fire/explosives detectors Emergency Communications
1. Emergency communications equipment, including portable radios, alternative; emergency school alert systems (strobe lighting, audible horns, etc.), and emergency notification to parents; 2. Repeaters or other equipment to ensure RF (radio frequency) communication is possible throughout the school;
3. Direct communication with emergency responders (e.g., law enforcement, fire, utilities);
4. Back-up communication in case of power outage.
Training
- Activities that promote a positive school climate and foster open communication among staff and students, such as: • Peer mediation/conflict resolution training; • Substance abuse prevention training; • Sexual harassment training; • Suicide prevention training; • Response to student violence; • Harassment, intimidation and bullying training; • Cyber safety; • Gang awareness and education.
Response and Recovery
1. Emergency kit and supplies;
2. Evacuation devices/equipment for disabled students/employees; and
3. Emergency vehicle.
Cyber Security Evaluation, Training and Upgrading
1. Securing personal information
2. Phishing
3. Malware
4. Firewalls
5. Passwords
The District must:
- Create and prepare purchase orders in accordance with district procurement procedures and Public School Contracts law
- The District arranges delivery
- Services, technology and equipment must be used for secular, neutral, non-religious and non-ideological purposes
- Only the school district can dispose of technology and equipment purchased for this program, in accordance with the provisions of the Public School Contracts Law
- Nonpublic School Security Aid Program funding can be used for the disposal of technology and equipment
If any Nonpublic School would like training or technical assistance on:
- School Safety and Security Plan Assistance
- Drill Observations
- In-service or Professional Development
- PTA Meetings
- Site Visits from the New Jersey Department of Education Office of School Preparedness and Emergency Planning
You can call (609) 588-2323 or go to http://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/security/ [email protected]
Members of the Board of Education are staunch supporters of increasing the Security allocation, as it is currently dependent on the Appropriations Act. The current allocation, of $75.00 a student, does not cover the high cost of Security technology and Security Guards, which continues to improve with the ever evolving world of technology.
If you have any questions or need assistance placing your Nonpublic Security Program order, you can call or email, Jim Trischitta, Supervisor of Nonpublic Security Programs and Technology at:
[email protected] or (732) 364-2400 extension 7046.
I am shocked that thenlakewood community did not have a gathering today to not timlate for tomorrow with rebuking and a speech!! Everyone else is lowering the flag and etc… and we did not hear anything today!! I hope this can reach someone to arrange something in lakewood
We need enforcement! Schools should have inspections ensuring that they are safe. Don’t wait for tragedy to hit closer to home to wake up. The time is now. A security guard at every openable door is a MUST.
No more choices what to spend on. Once priority #1 is filled, they can get funding for #2 etc
To by me.
There are many schools that have many ,many openable doors . If you want to require them to have a security guard by every such door,then you will need to ask parents to pay thousands more in tuition for that . Also security guards wont help that much until they can secure their buildings with the fences ,cameras and access control locks. These items cost huge amounts of money . Are you willing to fund all this? It’s easy to make comments on a blog as long as you don’t have to pay the millions that your comments will cost
it sounds to me as if you dont have kids in school or they have graduated already. No I dont think that anyone is asking the parents to pay for all the security that is required however that the townships job. believe me it should be TOP PRIORITY and SOON
I believe the bill referenced above, Secure Schools for All Children Act (P.L. 2016, c.49) and signed into law on September 6, 2016 was bill (S86) (conditionally vetoed by Christie) was actually approved by the state Senate in October and by the Assembly on Nov. 21.(and went into effect as law approved on Nov. 21, 2016.
In June 2017,Class Three Special Law Enforcement Officers could be hired for the explicit purpose of providing security at public or nonpublic schools when schools are in session or occupied by students or staff.
A Class Three SLEO must be a retired law enforcement officer, less than 65 years of age, who previously served as a fully-trained, full-time police officer in New Jersey. The officer must have served as a full-time officer within three years of appointment as a Class Three SLEO (or five years during the first year following the effective date of the new law). The officer must also be physically capable of performing the functions of the position, and possess a New Jersey Police Training Commission basic police officer certification or New Jersey State Police Academy certification.
So my reading is that this is entirely possible for private schools and NOT “houses of worship” as defined or yet to be defined by law.
My suggestion would be to do a poll on (TLS) followed by a petition to get as many counties involved as possible to support Class Three SLEOs at all houses of worship. There may be issues of Federal and State law to overcome but I think this should definitely be pursued.
I would be glad to help out here in Ocean as an elected member of the Ocean County Republican Committee, (thank you all who voted) as I’m sure the other members, Lakewood and otherwise, would also stand behind it and work to figure out the legal requirements that would need to be in put in place and any impediments that need to be overcome.
The TLS poll would be a good start toward a statewide effort to get our elected officials to push to get this into law, in my opinion, as soon as possible.
A comment above suggested the outrageous expenses involved in hiring security.
What are the payout amounts of the grants that each school is actually receiving ??
I would love to see every school properly secured, with all doors except one locked, and a camera monitoring entry. But there is a huge difference between a township arming 6 schools and Lakewood hiring 100+ officers to cover every location. That’s easily $4m in salary, plus security measures.
Perhaps if schools would band together and rent out different floors or wings of one larger building with one guard stationed, it would lessen expenses and tuition. Otherwise, this simply isn’t feasible.
The above poster was responding to the idea of a full time guard by Every Door.The cost for that would be prohibitive. Some schools would have enough from the grant to hire a part time guard by the front door only with the grant money ,but certainly not every door and in most cases not full time .
I believe there is potential for your proposal. Many former and retired law enforcement officers are eligible under the SLEO statutes and seek out and perform these duties for very reasonable rates to supplement their fixed incomes (pension, etc).
Maybe we can work with an agency or recruiter to come up with something that may be affordable, although I don’t think it would be totally covered, I think that’s worth a shot.
The the bill referenced above (Secure Schools for All Children Act (P.L. 2016, c.49) is comprehensive but I think the SLEO should be the highest priority along with Security Awareness Training and other programs which can be obtained at no charge through Federal Programs from DHS or State programs from the NJCICC.
I conferred with my associates at CyVision Technologies. As you may already know we are a DHS derived cyber-security firm with 9 patents and DOD Awards. We are also the ONLY NIST licensed cyber-security solution for Zero-Day Cyber Attacks for National Security in the world. In other words we are battle field deployed in the most dangerous scenarios.
We are willing to implement this extremely robust cyber-security protection to the District at NO CHARGE covering the entire district topology (depending on how everyone is connected) on an ongoing basis, moving forward, BEFORE wading through the paperwork and waiting for the NJ government bureaucracy to respond. Since this will be a free service, I don’t think any bids would be required or any expenses need to be approved.
We are committed and ready to do this ASAP.
If anyone knows who to contact, we can start as soon as tomorrow and have at least some level of protection up and running in days.
There are NO local resources required other than the existing IT staff to perform the technical details to mitigate the threats we identify and where and how configure and administer the remediation required.
The Ocean County Committee may be a good place to reach out to, so I urge my elected colleagues there to contact me to get this going.
Hi Dovid,
As it so accurately states above, the current allocation, of $75.00 a student, does not cover the high cost of Security technology and Security Guards, which continues to improve with the ever evolving world of technology.
In my long experience in security and cybersecurity in particular, this is not an adequate amount considering actual capital expenses. We must include the “fungible” expense of the resources that would be necessary to bear the burden of the administrative, clerical processes and procedures that are absolutely necessary.
That can be anything from reviewing and providing floor plans to bidders, the actual process of accurately creating all the different and precise requirements for each type of bid, the bid request processing and performing the evaluation and selection could easily leave very little left for the actual hard costs to actually implement the absolutely necessary security solutions proposed. Which basically means to me, it’s likely, in most situations, adequate or even the most basic of solutions for any of the delineated items would actually see the light of day.
In other words, I strongly believe we must push for funding a Request For Proposal process for the potential vendors as well as the actual Request For Bid process separately over and above what the “Capital” expense would be for the actual implementation, which in my experience, the amount available per student, $75, is grossly underestimated.
I would like to see any studies undertaken to determine how the $75 was arrived at and I will, IYH, file a NJ OPRA request (New Jersey Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1) to obtain that information.
To Ron
The 75 dollar figure was arrived at because that’s all the State was interested in paying, not because that is enough to cover any costs. Also bear in mind that the bid process is very cumbersome due to state and local regulations ,prevailing wages etc . I know of schools that had bids from private companies for security systems such as cameras and access control that they could have gotten installed for 20,000 yet the actual costs with the state Grant’s was way more than double that over 50,000,because of prevailing wage requirements and the fact that not every company is eligible to bid on state contracts ,so the bids come in much higher than what the school could get the work done for if they were allowed to award it directly to the lowest bidder. Its really a shame that the schools are not able to maximize the use of these funds due to the cumbersome state and Board of ed regulations.
Touch-down!
That’s why we should do the OPRA request to see how they arrived at the number.
Onerous paperwork. Need help. Anybody?
Ron
The best way to help schools maximize their funding would be to convince the state to allow every school to choose from the lowest of any 3 bids and not have to go through the Board of Ed. This would effectively more than double what the schools can buy . For example a school that wants to install perimeter fencing and car access gates to keep out strangers which the school can find a contractor for 50,000 for example. The same thing when it is bid through the Board of Ed with prevailing wages and limited approved contractors ,will most likely come in at over 100,000 . Since the school grant is nowhere near 100,000 they wont end up doing the work, leaving their building vulnerable .
I don’t know Sam, off the top of my head, convincing the state – while they already have this in place, the RFB process would be a nightmare. I could be wrong and it may be worth a try. We would need some big players and Agudah likely, to get behind this. I think it would be a battle since they’ve spent so much time to put this bill into law already. BTW, even if it could happen, I have my doubts about many schools being able to afford even a fence (which is really not a great deterrent) at $75 a student.
Moshe xincha- I didn’t say every door. I said every door locked except one, and a camera watching/ guard stationed at that door.
One guard per school. But how many schools are there now? And what is the point of a part time guard when the shooter will wait for him to be off the clock?
Ron Benvenisti- $75 per child is a group rate. Not impossible with local Lakewood/ Jackson/ Howell High or even Bais Faiga or Cheder, not so much with schools that host 20-40 kids.
I hope you’re right but – I don’t think it would work out. I’m thinking that if they would allow the aggregate of $75 across all students to be distributed across all schools as blanket coverage, it might be possible to work out some kind of budget across the whole system, not limited by each school’s enrollment. (Head count). I’m not clear if that is the case but that could possibly help a little. Personally, I don’t think so.
The paperwork for filing a New Jersey Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1, is insane. Does anyone have experience with this? Can anybody help with this?
https://www.nj.gov/grc/public/docs/GRCrequest.doc
Why am I not surprised? This takes a huge effort which should be easily accessible to all New Jerseyans.
Please help if you can.