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Lansing school officials held a brainstorming session with about 30 community members, faculty, staff, and school board members to talk about safety.  School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso gave the Board Of Education a rundown of various available aid for improving school safety, and said that safety measures implemented in the past five years have included locking the school facilities, maintaining the HVAC and air quality.

"People forget about those," Pettograsso commented. "You think about safety as cameras and security, but it's much more than that.  A lot of the things we said were going to happen in 2014 have yet to happen.  We were allotted $680,000 in Smart Bond Money in 2014.  We have two phases.  The first phase was submitted almost nine months ago now.  It finally got to the review phase.  In it is our VOIP phone system, and some replacement boards.  We're hopeful that that will be approved as soon as possible so we can get them in the summer."

She added that if the District's request for Phase 2 Smart Bond money is approved it will be used to upgrade aging cameras with new ones that are capable of providing clearer images that cover wider areas. 

Pettograsso said that a half dozen funding sources will be used to upgrade cameras and improve safety features on the Lansing campus, starting as early as this summer.

"Phase two will replacing some cameras and adding some areas in parking lots, and elsewhere," she said. "We're implementing recommendations from state troopers, from day automation with security works with all the local school districts, and our policy committee, ultimately.  We're looking at those, and we're looking at more 'swipe' doors so there are fewer keys and easier access.  Door contacts will give us an alert saying when a door is open.  That's one of our biggest areas, when students are coming and going and they prop the door open, or coaches are carrying a lot of equipment and they prop the door open for five minutes, not realizing it's a safety issue."

The second source is money in the current capital project.  If the project comes in under budget contingencies are written into it that will allow safety features.

"We always include safety areas in capital projects," Pettograsso said. "There are a couple of things we'll be able to squeeze into our current capital project.  If it comes in a little lower there are contingencies.  A panic button will be in all the main offices.  Pressing it will put the buildings right into lock-down."

She said $35,000 in Safe Act money has not yet been spent this year.  She said schools are allowed to spend up to $2,000 of that money per camera, and noted that there is a possibility that the total will be raised to $100,000 in the future because of renewed interest in school safety.  She added that there are plans to spend next school year's Safe Act money after July 1st.

Pettograsso said that capital outlay and energy efficiency projects are ways the school district can use its finances to get things done without impacting the local community.  And finally, some safety spending has been allotted in the general budget.  Internet infrastructure upgrades are planned.

"None of the cameras or doors will work without having the best servers possible," she said.  "It's bandwidth.  The more things you put on, the more congested it gets and the slower it gets.  So this summer we're upgrading our wifi and our servers to help make sure we are able to keep all our programs going."

Local consultants have included state troopers, the Tompkins County Sheriff's Department, local FBI, and other emergency responders.

"We have some great consultants working with us who really understand our philosophy, which is making sure that everything about Lansing still feels like a community, a caring community that's open to you while being secur," Pettograsso said. "One of the things that came out of our meeting was how many people need to focus on the safety and security... it's really a small group of people.  Your administrators and supervisors make those decisions based on consultants who work on this every day.  We bear that burden of knowing all that.  The teachers and faculty and staff need to be trained to know what to do in all these situations, but really need to focus on having great relationships with their students and not have to worry about going to a camera because this kid did this.  That's not the intent at all.  It's just to get the word out that we're safe.  If something does happen you're going to get caught.  All of this will create more time for us to react in a way that we know is the safest."

She also said that every school district in the area has signed up for the NaviGate cloud-based safety service, which allows emergency responders access to crucial information over the Internet so they can be more prepared when they arrive to handle an emergency.

"Right now if something happened before this year a swat team would come in and say 'show me your blueprints' and I would go to my back office and pull out these big papers -- and there have probably been three building projects since they've been updated," she said. "Now that we have this they'll have access to all that information before they even show up on campus.  They'll have 3-D pictures of every classroom; access to all of our protocols so they'll know what the teachers have been trained in; they'll have access to unlock the exterior door locks; so it will be a lot more efficient."

"Our focus will be having the best equipment we can, and maintaining that safe and secure and loving community that our faculty and staff do a great job of putting out there," she concluded. "That's what I really want them to focus on."

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