Conewago Valley School District took another step towards hiring a school security officer during the school board meeting on Monday evening.
The board approved a job description for the school security officer (SSO).
During the time for public comment, one individual questioned why the district would hire an SSO instead of looking into having police officers offer security.
“The biggest reason the board would like to see the SSO is the fact that we will have control over what they do,” board president Edward Groft said. “If we bring somebody in from the outside, we do not have the control. If we bring the police in, they control when and where and how things are going to happen. This will be a person that is an employee.”
Groft added that hiring an SSO would also add consistency for the district staff and the students.
“If we bring police in from outside and this officer is here today or even for the school year, that doesn’t mean he’s going to be here next year,” Groft said. “But if we bring somebody in that’s hired by the school, when they’re here next year or the next year there’s going to be some continuity. You can expect who you’re going to be dealing with and things like that. Even the kids are going to be looking forward to seeing the same person.”
Additional safety updates are also being completed.
Matthew Muller, director of district safety and communications, said staff would have training this week on emergency management, emergency preparedness, and threat assessment. Additional training to discuss situational awareness and other topics will be held later this year, according to Muller.
“We’re pretty excited about that,” Muller said.
All employees will be issued a parking tag as well as branded badge reels or breakaway lanyards in addition to their identification, according to Muller.
Parking tags have been issued before, but after reviewing the results of a risk and vulnerabilities survey completed in the district earlier this year, the decision was made to ensure all employees have parking tags to make it easier to know who is on campus, according to Muller.
Muller said in addition to about 740 responses received for a recent district safety survey, another 500 individuals participated in a communications survey. The community seemed to be interested in receiving text updates and in seeing apps offered, according to Muller.
Christopher Bowman, principal of New Oxford High School, said he is also concentrating on safety and communications.
In addition to completing safety drills, the school will work to communicate with both students and staff.
“We also have a class meeting with all of our classes to go over expectations and get information out to them,” Bowman said. “We also do have some starting activities for the year, so we have a detailed plan that’s already shared with our staff. Our bell schedules are laid out on the calendars for both our faculty and for our students on the NOHS students’ Google Calendar, so we’ll review that with our students on the first day just to make sure that they know what to expect every day moving forward.”
Academic updates
Conewago Valley’s elementary school principals greeted the class of 2026 ahead of the new school year.
Autumn Zaminsky, principal of Conewago Township Elementary School, and Christopher Cobb, New Oxford Elementary prinicipal, recently visited incoming kindergarten students.
Cobb said most districts in the area do not hold kindergarten visitation and said it is a “special tradition” in Conewago Valley and “a great way to welcome our students.”
Zaminsky said the elementary schools are setting the students up for success early.
“The other thing we’re looking forward to is just kicking off the year with the focus on academics,” Zaminsky said. “We’re going to be utilizing the reading specialists, math specialists, gifted teacher and school psychologists to dig in and provide assessments for our students so that way we can really meet the needs for all learners.”
Cobb said the addition of a token reward system in the schools will also help students. In addition to using math as they earn and save tokens, Cobb said the CHARGE program – which stands for, ‘committed, honest, adaptable, respectable, generous and engaged’ – will also encourage students.
Dr. Brad Sterner, assistant superintendent for the district, said about 20 new teachers participated in the induction program this year. The teachers are a mix of newly-graduated and experienced teachers, but all of them were able to take a bus tour of the district for the induction program.
“The purpose of taking a tour wasn’t just for our new teachers to see what our school district is, but really to understand where our students are coming from and seeing the vast variety of developments that we have, the municipalities that we have,” Sterner said. “So we went on a tour around the entire district perimeter. We also stopped by every school building and the principals greeted us as we got off the bus.”
Conewago Valley staff have been busily writing and updating the curriculum, according to Charlie Trovato, director of curriculum for the district.
Trovato said staff worked over the summer to write the math curriculum. The district is also working on its overall curriculum framework and a curriculum guidebook that should be shown to the board later this year.
Other business
Stephanie Corbin, the director of special education in Conewago Valley, said the district has about 45 new kindergarten students enrolling from the IU preschool program.
Corbin thanked the board for agreeing to develop a new autistic support classroom.
“It was desperately needed and it is filled and we are working hard to get that teacher in there and getting things done,” Corbin said.
With the new school year beginning, Corbin said staff is working to ensure students’ supports and services are in place, IEP and 504 meetings are set and other processes are in place for students.
The board approved the hiring of several employees, including adding an assistant athletic director at the high school and an assistant girls’ volleyball coach.
The board held a brief executive session before the meeting in order to discuss personnel, according to Groft.
The board will hold a study session at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 11.
The next regular meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 18.
Both meetings will be held in the district board room. Meetings are also live-streamed on the district’s YouTube channel.
Imari Scarbrough is a freelance journalist. She was a staff newspaper reporter for five years before becoming a freelancer in 2017. She has written on crime, environmental issues, severe weather events, local and regional government and more.
You can visit her website at ImariJournal.com.