Santa Paula High School and SPPD talking about security
By Brian D. Wilson
Santa Paula High School
Published: February 01, 2013
The Santa Paula Police Department and Santa Paula High School are working together on security issues. This comes in the wake of recent incidents at schools in other parts of the country, although Interim Police Chief Ish Cordero said the two groups had been talking before the most recent shootings at a Newtown, Connecticut school in December. Cordero said he and the SPHS security chief met when unification of the Santa Paula Union High School District and Santa Paula Elementary District became a reality.
Last week police department representatives, along with school district personnel, walked through the SPHS campus. Cordero said last week’s activity was just a walk-though of campus facilities so police could get to know the area. “We don’t want to interfere with their plans,” he said. “We just wanted to know what they had planned.”
Police looked at the layout of each building during the walk-through. Cordero noted, “If something happens we want to know where to respond, who’s in charge and who’s got keys. We want to establish a plan in case of any type of emergency. We like to do our own assessment and we want to be prepared to respond to whatever happens.”
There are plans for a drill of some kind in the near future to test out what the SPPD learned about the campus. District Superintendent Dr. Pamela Martens was along for the tour, and reported to the Board of Trustees at their meeting last week about the activity.
