TUPPER LAKE — The Tupper Lake Board of Education held a special meeting Tuesday evening to approve its 2024 revisions to the safety plan for the district.

The board voted 5-0 to approve the safety plan. Since 2000, New York has mandated that all school districts have a safety plan in place. The Tupper Lake Central School District must submit the approved plan to the state Education Department by Oct. 1, according to Superintendent Jaycee Welsh.

At TLCSD’s regular board meeting on Sept. 9, Welsh summarized the plan’s purposes.

“The plans are intended to coordinate with local and county resources in the event of an emergency, respond to the needs of all the school buildings within the district and be consistent with emergency response plans at the building level,” she said.

The districtwide safety plan is partially public but also includes building-specific emergency response plans, which Welsh said were not subject to disclosure. This is done so that emergency response strategies by the school and law enforcement are not publicly known, which prevents them from being accessed and compromised by individuals looking to cause harm, increasing their efficacy against threats.

“This ensures student and staff safety,” Welsh said at the Sept. 9 meeting.

The Tuesday approval vote followed a 30-day public comment period that ran from Aug. 13 to Sept. 13 to the non-confidential portions of the safety plan. Prior to the vote, Welsh described a final community comment that had come after the public hearing but before the comment period officially closed.

“It was to add a social worker to the list of individuals who would be trained and assist in case of a crisis. It was a wonderful suggestion and we added it (to the safety plan),” she said.

The comment followed a larger batch that the board reviewed at their regular meeting last week. While nobody from the public spoke at the hearing, the district had set up an online message portal for comments to be left. TLCSD reviewed those at the Sept. 9 meeting.

“We had a fair number of comments, which I think is absolutely terrific,” Welsh said before beginning a PowerPoint presentation where she summarized comments and merged similar or repeating points.

Board of Education President Jane Whitmore thanked Welsh for her efforts to get the safety plan revised ahead of the state deadline.

“This is one of the first things in Jaycee’s initial 48 hours with the district that she jumped on. Thank you, Jaycee, for being firm with that,” Whitmore said.