City charter school gets vital lesson about safety
CHESTER » City police officers Joshua Dewees and Jose Alvarez presented an active-shooter training course to staff at the Chester Charter School for the Arts on Friday.
The officers are the School Resource Officers, or SROs, for the city, working on mediation and afterschool programs for students, and training programs for faculty, administration and support staff.
Friday’s presentation had been planned in January, but had a new relevance following Wednesday’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“There was an SRO in the Florida school. Students said they only knew what to do because of that,” said Alvarez.
The officers’ presentation included lockdown drill protocols and how to teach students to report suspicion behavior. “If you see something, say something,” said Alvarez, “that little piece of information can save somebody’s life.”
Funded through a Pennsylvania Safe Schools Initiative Targeted Grant through the state Department of Education, the officers “work with the community and the school staff to better the all-around climate and quality of life,” said Dewees.
Besides training educators on how to handle a crisis situation, the officers work on violence and crime prevention through mediating student conflicts and addressing behavior before students face criminal charges.
“The biggest thing for us being in schools in uniform is not to intimidate the kids, but to build a relationship,” said Alvarez. “It’s all about teamwork — the police department, the school district, the SRO program. We want our kids to come to school and feel safe.”
The SRO initiatve includes getting students who face criminal charges into diversion programs, teaching them how to make better life decisions before entering the court system. Students have been referred to the Philadelphiabased Connection Training Service’s Face Forward program, which offers youth offenders education, job preparation and other skills training. Charges are expunged upon completion of the program.
Alvarez and Dewees have used their position to advocate for extra-curricular programs to expose students to different career opportunities and avoid the temptations of crime. A highlight for Alvarez was seeing the robotics club at Chester Community Charter School qualify for the LEGOLAND North American Open in May 2017, traveling to California to compete against 80 teams from across the U.S. and Japan and South Korea.
“California was a new world to them,” said Alvarez. “They see that they can go to college and become an engineer or work with computers.”