Concerned citizens and Jamestown Public Schools employees have spent the past several months working on school safety recommendations.

Some of those recommendations were presented recently to Board of Education members, including security systems that can be used at some school entrances, systems that link to fire alarm systems in case of a safety emergency to help with a faster police or fire department response to a school, in-classroom training that can help teachers better help students in case of an emergency and physical improvements to buildings to make them safer. Members of the School Safety Committee worked diligently over the course of several months on their recommendations in areas including weapons detection system, blue light fire alarm systems, partnerships with law enforcement, a safety analysis with New York State Police, camera and detection systems, professional development, and ballistic window systems.

The Jamestown school board has been particularly steadfast over the years of not increasing property taxes, so we have little doubt board members are going to be cost-conscious as they look at some of the options they’ve been presented. Two other things we hope board members keep in mind as they evaluate the committee’s work include weighing effectiveness and intrusiveness of some of the measures, the effects of safety measures on the children attending school and the best way to inform parents of the entire safety plan for the district.

No safety measure is foolproof, so board members will have to weigh shortcomings in the systems with the benefit and costs. At the same time, the board has to be careful not to publicize those shortcomings to would-be bad actors. As for the effects on children, board members and district administrators have to be aware how changes will be perceived by children — particularly younger children who may not understand why some measures are necessary. But perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle is helping parents understand the bigger picture of school safety. There are a ton of things the Jamestown Public Schools has in place that most parents have no clue about. There are reasons for some things to remain quietly in the background. The district, again, doesn’t want to help a whackadoodle with bad intentions. But parents may feel more at ease with the measures the district is about to take if they had a better understanding of the district’s overall security plan.

A lot of work has gone into the school safety recommendations presented to the board. Now, it’s time to start turning them into policy we can all live with.