Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools holds annual spring safety meeting

Willoughby-Eastlake Schools, in its yearly spring safety meeting, discussed with city officials safety plans for the upcoming school year.

Steve Nedlik, director of operations and security for W-E Schools, met with Mayors Dennis Morley of Eastlake and Rich Regovich of Willowick; Police Chiefs Brian Turner of Willowick and Jack Beckwith of Willoughby; police Sgt. Bruce LaForge of Willowick and Patrolman Bruce Feder of Willoughby; Fire Chiefs Todd Ungar of Willoughby and Robert Posipanka of Willowick; and Rich Harvey of the Lake County Fire Chiefs Association. Also in attendance at the April 13 meeting were Jeff Henderson and Jeff Crocker from ThenDesign Architecture, which is working with the school district on designing the new schools; and Tim DelVecchio, school safety consultant with the Ohio Schools Council.

This is an annual meeting that has been held in the spring for the past four years in regard to school safety, Nedlik said.

“We had some questions regarding security items at our new schools that pertain to construction, so we wanted to get some feedback from police and fire to some of those questions, and DelVecchio, a consultant from homeland security, went through some annual plan certifications that are due to the Ohio Department of Education,” Nedlik said.

There was discussion on safety requirements and changes for next school year, such as drills and other things that need to be in place, he added.

The director described the gathering as a kickoff meeting to start talking about what they need to be planning for next school year, such as changes in policies or protocols. There also was discussion on school resource officers and communication within the schools.

The discussion on SROs centered around making sure the officers handle the same situations in the same manner at the different schools

“We want consistency in how the SROs do things in Willoughby compared with how they do things at North,” Nedlik said. This would include ensuring that penalties for similar violations of rules and regulations at different schools are consistent.

Nedlik said that all W-E SROs were police officers and to his understanding, all of them have taken the state SRO training course.

“We also talked about rally points or locations for buses to take students to if they are on their way to school and there is an incident at the school. We identified those areas and reviewed them,” Nedlik said. “We talked about our district safety terms and we reviewed those. We talked about some of our safety campaign strategies for next school year and we agreed that we are going to create another committee similar to the one we had four years ago when we adopted our guidelines.”

Nedlik said that at the next meeting, they plan to come back together and begin their review of all of the practices and protocols and make recommendations to the School Board for any changes.

Some of the items Nedlik wants to look at further is access controls and how the flow of people and students goes back and forth.

Nedlik noted that during the April 13 meeting, the conversation was about Willoughby South High School and how the district will have multiple partners on the campus and what best practices are to be put in place.

According to Nedlik, there are plans for containment areas, in case someone wanted to visit the lobby or the senior center and becomes disoriented with a wrong turn, or if someone wanted to enter the school through another door. The district is looking to make sure that there is not a way for that to happen.

The district also is researching the possibility of a clear highly resistant film that goes over glass as additional protection for the school buildings. According to Nedlik, the film is not bulletproof, but it does slow down anyone trying to enter into a building.

Another topic of discussion at the meeting was the STOP — Students Text, Officers Protect — app that the Willowick Police Department plans to use. LaForge presented it to the chiefs present at the meeting.

Everyone seemed interested, Nedlik said.

“I can’t speak for anyone individually, but Bruce (LaForge) did walk around and show how it works and demonstrated it,” Nedlik said “There seemed to be interest from the other communities that were there.”

Nedlik looks to put together a committee to discuss and review safety procedures and protocols sometime over the summer. They have a couple of opportunities to meet in July.

He plans to ask school district staff people and some of the administrators to be on the team and two representatives from Ohio’s School Council to be a part of it as well.

“I’m going to set something up for the staff to see who is interested in participating and then we will put together a list and ask the chiefs and mayors to identify someone on their staff and let me know who that is and then we will get the group together,” Nedlik said.

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