The Tamaqua Safety Commission had a guest speaker this week from the NRA School Shield group.

The commission, which includes first-responders, police chiefs, parents, as well as TASD staff and board members, held its initial meeting last month. The commission was formed after Policy 705 was dropped. That was the board’s controversial move that allowed arming staff.

Don Alwes, staff instructor with the NRA School Shield, gave a presentation on school safety. According to the NRA School Shield website, “The NRA School Shield program has a singular mission: to protect our children. Recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to school security, the NRA School Shield program is committed to addressing the many facets of school security including best practices in security infrastructure, technology, personnel, training and policy. Through this multidimensional effort, the NRA School Shield seeks to engage communities and empower leaders to help make our schools more secure.”

Alwes became a police officer in 1979. He was discovered by members of the commission who have seen his presentations before.

“I started my career off as a campus police officer at a small college campus police department. When I started teaching the tactics and the weapons, it wasn’t too long after that we started having active shooters. One of the first school shootings was in my state in 1992,” Alwes said.

“So we were thinking about these things even back before Columbine. Schools are big, soft targets. After 9/11, I helped stand up an anti-terrorism program; homeland security projects. One of the goals was to identify soft targets and figure out; where are they, how soft a target are they, and how could they be made harder.”

The newly-founded safety commission is set to meet at 7 p.m. on the second Monday of each month at the Tamaqua Area High School. Both meetings have been open to the public, however, there might be a new attendance change throughout the upcoming calendar.

“As we get into the weeds here on process and specifics, I think that the meetings will wind up not being public,” said Tamaqua Area School Board President Larry Wittig.”

In regard to any update on a safety policy — there is nothing new.

“There’s a number of different factors,” said Tamaqua superintendent Ray Kinder.

“According to board policies in the state of Pennsylvania, 705 code is not simply for if you’re going to arm people in your building. So if the district is going to employ an SRO, they’re going to need policy 705 to give that person the authority to do those things in the building. If they are going to do anything else, according to the law, they’re still going to have that policy.”

Kinder added, “I think the board has been pretty adamant, regardless of the realization from the state and the changing of the rules. They’re going to make sure that it’s legal. But to say that this is what it’s necessarily going to be, that’s part of where we start to go next; is start to look at what the different options could be.”