Nagler addresses Mineola school security at board of ed meeting

Rebecca Klar
Mineola Superintendent Michael Nagler addressed school security at last Thursday's board of education meeting. (Photo courtesy of Mineola High School via Twitter)

Amping up security measures is on the minds of school districts across the nation in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Mineola is no different.

During last Thursday’s Board of Education meeting Superintendent Michael Nagler gave a presentation on school safety measures, and allowed parents to share their concerns and suggestions.

Three issues kept surfacing in the discussion: closing the high school campus, enforcing single points of entry beyond normal school hours, and having an armed guard at the schools.

The suggestions and questions will be put into a survey that will be sent out districtwide for input, Nagler said.

He also said there are individual school plans and districtwide policies that he will not fully disclose for safety reasons.

“I don’t want people to know what we’re going to do if something happens,” Nagler said. “Because if you know everybody knows and the bad person knows, as well. And I think that is common sense.”

One security measure already in place districtwide is what Nagler calls the “man trap,” two sets of doors where a visitor walks in and is not allowed to proceed into the next before being cleared by a greeter.

There are also security cameras at each door where visitors are greeted, and faculty members have pass cards with different permission for entry into different buildings, he said.

The system creates a single point of entry and, he added, “in essence it’s a lock out all the time.”

However, Nagler said, the system is only in place during normal school hours. It does not include events before and after school or weekend events.

“The thing underlying all of this is we are community schools, we want to welcome our community, we want to welcome our children, welcome our parents and we don’t want to lose sight of that,” he said. “And at the same time we want to make sure that we’re at a level of safety we’re all comfortable with.” 

While each school poses unique challenges, the high school presents the most, Nagler said.

One reason is the open campus that allows juniors and seniors to leave for lunch, he said – an issue he said he has discussed ending in the past.

Nagler said he brought it up both after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he was high school principal, and after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

“Immediately people wanted my head off of my body … parents of juniors and seniors were not prepared to tell their children I agree with Dr. Nagler you should not go outside,” he said.

Nagler said he watched the high school front door camera from his office the other day and counted how many people went in and out.

In 20 minutes, he said, he counted 57 people.

Only one was not a student.

“I will continue to say you cannot have a secure high school when children go in and out all day long,” Nagler said. “It just seems to make sense to me but it’s not so simple to enact what may be obvious.”

Nagler added it is not only the high school. Schools send younger children out for recess routinely.

He also said there are “special people days” in the younger grades where visitors, often times but not always grandparents, come. These visitors are strangers to the school and unknown faces to the administrators, he said.

With all that said, it is difficult to have a set protocol the district follows every day, Nagler said.

“All of those policies are things that we grapple with all of the time,” he said. “So there’s no easy decision when it comes to this discussion.”

Another suggestion brought up by a parent is having an armed guard.

The mother of three students in the district, two in the high school and one in the middle school, asked if Mineola would consider having a retired police officer or veteran present like other districts have.

Nagler said it is a multifaceted issue.

He said there are different levels of having an armed guard, and it would have to be decided whether the district wanted a guard with a concealed weapon or a holstered weapon.

He also said there is a budgetary cost, one that would likely be three times what is currently allotted.

He added that the question then spirals into how many guards are needed for safety, how many doors need to be guarded, etc.

Another part of the piece, he said, is the concept of schools.

“What do we want to raise our kids in,” Nagler said. “I’m not commenting on it, just posing it as another opinion people have. There’s an age of innocence, when does it begin and end? I know it’s a lot sooner than when I was younger but I don’t know that I would put an age on it.”

Another mother asked what the district is doing to empower children and make sure they’re not living with a constant level of anxiety.

Nagler said that the district has a good network of support staff in the buildings between guidance counselors, social workers, school psychologist and teachers, which he called “our frontline defense.”

Nagler said the bottom line in the vast majority of these shootings is mental health.

“Somebody missed a cue somewhere along the line,” he said.

But in Mineola, Nagler said, “we know our children.”

“Our children know when something isn’t right and they tell an adult. We do that very well,” Nagler said. “We know about instances before they occur because our network and relationship that we have with children and staff is very, very good. And we cultivate that and I believe it makes us a very special place.”

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