SARATOGA SPRINGS — For the second consecutive year, law enforcement officials and educators from across New York State met this week to discuss safety in schools.
Held at the Excelsior Springs Event Center, the 2023 Committee on Policing and Safeguarding Schools (C-PASS) School Safety Training Conference brought over 200 attendees in total, with law enforcement from 92 different agencies across the state on hand.
“The training that we do, we are successful in that by being collaborative between educators and law enforcement,” said Jonathan Becker, program director of C-PASS. “If we’re all under the same roof, experiencing the same training, then when we take that back to our school districts, it works that much smoother.”
Local law enforcement officials said the conference allows them to meet and share ideas with other officials from across the state.
“It’s been great for networking, getting to know a lot of other school resource officers and other administrators from different areas and sharing ideas,” said Brian Nikles, a deputy at the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office and a school resource officer at the Averill Park Central School District.
Becker said C-PASS was established in 2019, and initially held meetings in Albany before shifting to weekly virtual meetings due to COVID-19.
“It started out with trying to provide a baseline of specific training that would include everybody, and allow everybody to be on the same page with everything that we were doing,” said Becker. “I put (the conference) together last year with the help of our board, and this year, we’re here and we’re doing great things again.”
The conference includes debriefings of past incidents in schools, which Nikles said can equip officers and school staff with the knowledge of how to handle such incidents.
“If these things would ever happen in one of our schools, we have the ability and knowledge on past incidents on how to handle it,” said Nikles. “There’s been quite a bit of information that has come from this year that we can apply. This is the second year they’ve had the conference, and I know I took back a lot last year that has helped us in the schools.”
Wednesday’s schedule included a presentation from the ‘I Love U Guys’ Foundation on the reunification process, which is the process of reuniting students with their families after an incident takes place at school.
“A lot of schools are starting to institute those kinds of things, so getting everybody up to speed on how that’s going to work, so we can kind of help each other if we do need it,” said Austin McGuire, a deputy from the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office who works as an SRO at the Berlin Central School District.
Nikles said it is important for both law enforcement and educators to be able to share ideas regarding safety and connecting with students.
“You build those relationships with everybody differently,” Nikles said. “When you share some of those ideas, maybe I can break down a wall with a student that I wasn’t able to by using the way somebody else does it.”
Kerri Canzone-Ball, Director of Pupil Personnel Services at the City School District of Albany, said the conference is “an affirmation of the work” the district has been doing.
“We were here for one day last year, but we thought it was such a worthwhile and important event that we took a team here for the whole conference this year,” said Canzone-Ball.
She said the district has “a really strong relationship” with local law enforcement agencies, and partners with Parsons and Northern Rivers to offer behavioral health services to students.
“I think the importance of sharing as much information with families and students, and having a transparent process regarding safety measures within the district is critical,” Canzone-Ball said. “So I’ve gotten some takeaways that will be going back to our district-wide safety team and our leadership team to see how we can tweak and make some improvements to our efforts.”
The deputies also said threat assessment has been another major topic at the conference.
“That’s a big thing that we need to do better at and more of,” said McGuire. “How we work with that, or how we get the right information to the right people at the right times. That’s a big thing.”
“How are we taking the information, how are we dealing with it?,” McGuire added. “What steps are we taking to determine whether or not that person really is a threat and needs something preventative, or is it something less?”
Nikles said that ultimately, the conference is “a great place” to meet new people, discuss ideas, and learn new strategies.
“We came here last year, and when we were told they were doing it again, we all wanted to come back,” said Nikles. “It’s a good place to do this. … As informative as it is enjoyable.”
