The Superintendents' Update on Oct. 18 outlined the ways the school communicates the public, authorities and internally.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — When faced with a possible security threat, the Pittsfield Public Schools' first priority is to ensure staff and students are safe. 

Then, the goal is to provide families with timely and accurate updates and a sufficient explanation once the incident has passed.

That's what Superintendent Joseph Curtis told a joint meeting of the School Committee and City Council last week, as he reviewed the district's emergency response communication to families.

"It's incredibly important that we first, when we have an incident, be it small or something larger, before we communicate with our community, including our parents, we ensure that all staff and students are safe," he said.

"It's very important to know we don't have a communication department. There is no one that takes the lead on communicating with our families. It is us."

The presentation referenced a September incident that caused Pittsfield schools to shelter in place.  The Pittsfield Police Department was pursuing a man wanted for murder in the state of Maine and because of Taconic High School's proximity to the chase, it was locked down.

Ward 1 Councilor Kenneth Warren pointed out that the agenda item was influenced by a "very well articulated" email from a student. Curtis and Mayor Peter Marchetti met with the student to discuss her concerns.

School Committee member Sara Hathaway was touched by the communication, as "she described herself as being terrified and that was horrifying, of course."  

"This is a bigger problem than Pittsfield can solve. School Violence and urban violence in general are big problems across the country," Hathaway said, pointing to a safe gun storage resolution that was passed last year.

"Hopefully we won't have terrified students who don't want to come to school because they feel unsafe. That's just something we can't allow to continue."

Curtis said school safety is on the administration's minds every minute of the day "And beginning at just past 6:30 a.m., we all become very alert of any possibility that something could happen."

He explained that the district has several internal communication protocols but circling in families is critical.

"As you know, with the prevalence of social media, text messages, things often reach our families before we do and that is the case," he said.

In September, when the district got word of a police chase on upper West Street, there were no questions asked when the PPD instructed them to shelter in place.

Students were communicating with their family members right away and Curtis said at this point, the district is aware that its internal clock starts.

"Where we're looking and often start a timer of how many minutes are passing between the incident and when we can communicate just so we are always keeping that awareness," he added.

"But first, we want to make sure before we communicated with families about that, that our students and staff were successfully placed in a shelter in place and so once we are assured that our staff and students are safe, we take the time to start to draft a factual, concise update including relevant details, those that we can release about whether the incidents resolved or ongoing, and its nature."

During the September shelter-in-place, it was relayed that a community-related event triggered the precautionary measure "and we do that just to provide, to provide some sort of ease of mind to our families that this wasn't directly related to our schools," Curtis said.

If the police are involved, the district gets any language approved by the department.

"Again, I wanted to re-emphasize that in many cases, particularly it's a community-related incident parents want, rightfully so, the information about that incident right away and we do not provide that," the superintendent explained.

"That is up to the Pittsfield Police Department, and we have a very strong partnership with them. There is seamless communication the entire time an incident's ongoing and they're involved up to the minute, in most cases. Sometimes we decide to craft a public statement together. Sometimes we write a statement that provides a determination from the Police Department and when that determination has been provided by Police Department leadership, we are clear to say that."

In the case of the West Street incident, the district indicated that it would communicate further once the PPD did and families were offered the opportunity to contact Curtis' office, the school's principal, or the district emergency and safety coordinator with questions.

"Many people do that and in a variety of different ways. They call my office, they email myself, the principal, and we get back to them near immediately with an answer because we know how urgent this type of communication is," Curtis said.

"We want to assure everyone that we do make every attempt to communicate as quickly as possible but we do it in a factual, responsible way. When the Pittsfield Police Department is involved, which in many cases they are, we ask them for a position or statement that we communicate and then we always try to ensure, depending on the incident, that there is follow-up communication."

The district's new app-based tool, ParentSquare, allows it to communicate seamlessly with multilingual families and is said to make communication even stronger and more efficient. Communications are also posted to the Pittsfield Public Schools website and, depending on the situation, its social media accounts.

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