John Netis, safety supervisor for Agawam schools (center), is flanked by the district’s new school safety coordinators. On the left are Jamie Podworski and Sable Johnson; on the right are Eric Balslov (left) and Matt LaCroix.
Reminder Publishing photo by Mike Lydick
AGAWAM — John Netis, safety supervisor for Agawam schools, is passionate about school safety. In his annual update to the School Committee, he shared some of the proactive safety measures to keep staff and students safe in school.
Nettis began his Feb. 25 presentation by sharing some alarming statistics. He said mass public shootings have increased at a “dangerous pace” during the past 10 years. In 2024, he said there were 690 mass shooting events in this country, with 83 violent events occurring in schools nationwide.
To help ensure the safety of staff, students and visitors, Nettis said more layers are being added to the district’s existing safety plans. “We’ve been using evidence-based practices that are driven by data from across the country,” he said.
Nettis said data is put on the table, pulled apart and then added to the district’s school safety presentations. He added that it’s also important to use best practices that have served as a model for surrounding towns for the past 10 years.
“There are a lot of considerations that affect our strategy and drives a lot of our procedures. For example, facility design, geographic profile, quality of training and budgets, just to name a few,” said Nettis, who thanked the Agawam Police Department for their ongoing assistance.
Nettis was joined for his presentation by four teachers — Eric Balslov, Sable Johnson, Matt LaCroix and Jamie Podworski — who started working with him last year as the district’s school safety coordinator team.
LaCroix, responsible for working with the elementary schools and the Early Childhood Center, explained that one of the team’s major accomplishments included updating how the district’s schools communicate so they all use the same “plain language” during an emergency.
“Different schools were using different calls over walkie talkies and intercoms. That meant that students, as they moved up from one school to the next, had to relearn certain things,” said LaCroix. Identical standard response protocol posters and violent/critical incident posters also were created for every school.
“If you hear ‘hold’ over the intercom and you’re a substitute teacher, you can look at the poster to tell you what your role is and what your students should do in response to that situation. It’s common language. It’s just five commands, but really important in keeping everyone on the same page from preschool to 12th grade,” said LaCroix.
Podworski, one of the high school’s two safety coordinators, explained the importance of a school safety program called ALICE — which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
ALICE was introduced about 10 years ago following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Podworski said the team has built a “scaffold type approach” for different grade levels — from very basic training at the elementary levels to more elaborate training for high school students.
“We talk about a wolf at the door at the elementary level, then we build up to the high school, where we’ve done drills and put a threat in the hallway so students have to make a choice — evacuate or lock down,” he said.
Podworski said there’s no wrong choice in the training that’s designed to better prepare students and staff if something were to happen. “This is in response to a very dangerous situation that hopefully we never, ever see in any Agawam school. But the better prepared we are for it — if it ever were to happen — the best outcome — hopefully — would come from that training.”
Sable Johnson, the other high school safety coordinator, said she and the other coordinators have organized themselves to create a more unified approach to safety throughout the district. “We also needed a more updated approach to training new teachers about school safety and also dealing with the issue of what happens if they’re absent or if they’re not at the meeting.”
To deal with those issues, Johnson said the team developed a more comprehensive training slide show and is also working toward an individual training program — something a person could do self-paced on their own.
Balslov, who deals with the middle school and the junior high school, shared some of the team’s work that is in progress.
“We’ve been talking about our communication methods throughout our schools, predominantly radios,” he said. “Many schools have issues with the charging and how long the battery lasts and things like that. We’re figuring out what our co-workers need and then bringing it to representatives in the district to see if there are ways to solve that. We’re also looking at radio inventory and exploring options.”
Balslov said another thing the team has discussed is looking at old safety procedures to determine what needs to be updated. “Whether that’s in handbooks or just district policies, we want to make sure we stay relevant,” Balslov said.
The team also is working on a reunification plan after an emergency evacuation of a school — which has been an ongoing project for several years. “I don’t know that we’ll ever have it perfect, but we’re trying to get to the point where our schools can actually practice reunifying and who has what role,” Balslov said.
