District officials eye communication
Board discusses procedures after lockdown incident
COHOES, N.Y. » During the Cohoes City School District Board of Education meeting Wednesday, school board members and district officials discussed what they are looking to now do in the wake of a 15-year- old high school student being arrested for making a threat at the school on Tuesday.
Officials said at about 1:57 p.m. Tuesday, the Cohoes Police Department received notification from the Albany County 911 dispatcher that a threat was made to “shoot up the Cohoes High School.”
Officials said the school immediately went into lockdown, and the Cohoes Police Department responded to the school within seconds. City police said they were able to trace the phone to a 15-year- old male student inside the school and immediately apprehended the suspect.
The unidentified youth was transported to the Cohoes Police Youth Bureau for questioning. It was determined there was no credible threat of an impending shooting, according to city officials. Furthermore, officials said, admissions were made implicating himself in making the 911 phone call.
The discussion was first brought up by school board member Margaret Giller, who said she heard from several parents that they felt that communication could have been better during the lockdown incident.
“You know there was a lot on social media, I think it got a little bit out of hand and some of the comments that we heard from parents was that ‘Just tell me anything, just let me know that my child is in the lockdown right now. Even if you can’t tell me specific information, please just let me know that this situation is happening,’ and I think that was a very prominent message between everybody that was commenting on different social media posts,” said Giller. “Another issue was that students were actually calling their parents in the middle of this crisis and parents were upset because they felt hopeless.”
District Superintendent Jennifer Spring addressed some of those concerns
during Wednesday night’s meeting.
“I think everyone is safe and I think everyone knows that, but we can absolutely improve our communication procedures and our practices,” said Spring, who went on to note that district officials met at the high school Wednesday morning for a de-briefing session on the lockdown incident.
Spring said the district is going to be soon developing some “canned, ready to go”, messages to send out to parents for any future crisis situations.
“Because so many things happen in a crisis, first of all we don’t [always] have the information and it started that we really didn’t know what was happening,” explained Spring. “Law enforcement called this lockdown and we deferred to law enforcement, so like every 15 minutes we were finding out more informa-
tion, but with that being said we are looking to also develop a frequently asked questions memo that were going to share with all of our families.”
District officials did agree that faculty and students handled the situation well and that they did what they were supposed to do during a lockdown incident.
“I was really happy with the response by our staff and students….. they did exactly what they we’re supposed to do, but of course we are always looking to make it better,” said high school principal Bryan Wood during the meeting.
Spring said that they just recently implemented a whole new threat assessment process and she also thanked Cohoes Police Department for their fast and great response.
“Cohoes PD was just amazing,” said Spring.
“We work very closely with them, they are going to be utilizing and using the high school during the break for two days to conduct their own training on site, so that is something that we are collaborating with.”
Spring also said the Cohoes Police Department recently took part in an active shooter training at Troy High School and she noted that they are planning to do their own active shooter training during upcoming faculty meetings at each district school building.
“This would allow teachers to actually work with law enforcement in their own buildings to again review procedures without students there because we know that if our teachers are well prepared and feel confident that they will successfully lead their students through a crisis,” said Spring.