School board members' minds on keeping Westmont Hilltop students safe
Mar. 4—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Members of the Westmont Hilltop School District board's Safe Schools Committee are confident in the group's work to keep school buildings secure and make sure students, staff and faculty stay safe.
"I don't think anyone looks at this as deep as we do," said school board member David Angeletti. He is the chairman of the Safe Schools Committee's Protection Subcommittee, which includes school board members, district administrators, transportation specialists, emergency services personnel and law enforcement officers.
Jeffrey Masterson, chairman of the Safe Schools Committee, said Angeletti's job is focused on improving security at the district's schools. He's joined in that task by the district's full-time school police officer, Jason Hunter; two part-time school police officers; and security guards hired through Gittings Protective Services Inc., among others.
The other side of the coin is the Prevention Subcommittee, headed by high school Assistant Principal William Aurandt, which aims to stop problems before they start.
That group's focus includes the district's school counselors, the Safe2Say reporting program, the anti-violence Sandy Hook Promise and Rachel's Challenge programs, and the recently adopted Blues Program, a free "evidence-based mental wellness program" for high schoolers offered through The Learning Lamp.
Westmont Hilltop's school board has recently received the ire of some parents after a 14-year-old girl allegedly left a threatening note at the high school on Jan. 30, then allegedly went to the elementary school with a firearm on Feb. 6 and left another note before being apprehended by authorities.
Members of the Concerned Citizens of Westmont Hilltop School District have stressed the need for more transparency from school officials and criticized them for not doing enough to protect students.
Masterson, who has served on the school board for about 10 years, said protecting students has been the Safe Schools Committee's central goal since its inception. His discussions with former board President Dan Hill got the group off the ground.
"From the get-go, we wanted to make this school as safe as we possibly can without making it seem or appear like a fortress," Masterson said.
Some highlights of the group's efforts in the past six years or so include an increase in the number of security cameras in the district to cover more angles; better control of who can enter schools; and regular risk assessment evaluations by both Gittings and the state police.
Local law enforcement officers and other first responders are also regularly brought in to familiarize themselves with the buildings' layouts, and each classroom is numbered inside and out for better information-sharing in case of a crisis.
"There's just a whole gamut of things we're constantly looking at," Masterson said. However, he and Angeletti stressed that they do not "rest on their laurels."
Angeletti has a background in security, having designed security systems for federal installations, he said. He described the Safe Schools Committee as one of the best in the state based on the school district's size and said that Westmont Hilltop is one of the most secure districts in the region.
He joined the board around six years ago because of his own safety concerns as a parent. He recalled incidents that led him to speak out at board meetings, and after having a proposal for the hiring of a school resource officer ignored, he tossed his hat into the ring, wanting to make Westmont better for his children and all the other students.
What he discovered after being elected to the board was that the process for improvement is slow, as it is for other educational matters, too. Still, he's confident that the state of security at the district is much better than it was six years ago.
Within the past year, Westmont Hilltop hired its first school police officer, Karissa Grossman, who left the job a few months later. Hunter took the position in August. It's also expanded mental health services in the district and expanded on its contract with Gittings.
"We are in a position to say we're doing everything we know how to, and thankfully it's worked out,"Angeletti said.
Moving forward, Masterson and Angeletti said they'll keep evaluating the state of security at the district, and although they can't reveal every piece of the emergency operations plan, there are plans in the works to improve the district's dialogue with parents to try and release more information.
And they're confident the existing procedures worked during the recent threats.
Angeletti noted that the district evacuated hundreds of students and staff from the high school and reunified students with their parents effectively after the first note was found, and that throughout both incidents, no one was hurt and the suspect was arrested without incident.
Masterson added that, while that emergency dismissal went well, the issue presents a prime example of the need for a cellphone tower near the high school on Fair Oaks Drive in the Woodmont area of Upper Yoder Township, which is a dead zone for service. That issue has been held up in court for years after some Woodmont residents pushed back against the proposal to build the structure.
The next Safe Schools Committee meeting will be at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the high school.
