At the 10th largest school system, a violent threat comes every other day
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Version 0 of 1. Tom Vaccarello spent eight years as a state trooper in New Mexico and another 28 as a member of the Secret Service before he decided to leave in 2014. He was a deputy assistant director in the office of investigations, the organization responsible for the safety of the president, at a time when the agency was under scrutiny for security lapses. “Some agents made some pretty serious mistakes,” Vaccarello said. “It was a great career,” he said. “But the last couple of years it was pretty difficult in the end.” When he found an opening in Fairfax County public schools, Vaccarello said, he saw an opportunity to continue to protect and serve, this time by keeping children safe in the classroom. He soon became head of security for Fairfax, responsible for 189,000 students, 25,000 employees and 196 schools that make up the 10th largest school district in the country. What he learned early on, he said, was how similar his new job was compared to the Secret Service. The president’s life is threatened daily. In Fairfax County, he discovered that the schools receive about 100 threats annually, about one every other day in the academic year. “We don’t brush these off in any way, shape or form,” said Vaccarello, who joined Fairfax last January. “We take them seriously.” The struggle, Vaccarello said, is balancing student safety amid the large number of threats while attempting to keep disruptions to schools at a minimum. It’s no easy task, he said. “We can’t be complacent,” Vaccarello noted. “We have to respond to everything that comes in.” In December, simultaneous threats received by New York public schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District elicited starkly different responses from officials in both cities, which represent the two largest school systems in the nation. [Facing the same threat, schools in Los Angeles, New York take different tacks] New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton called the emailed threats a “hoax,” and schools in the city remained open. In Los Angeles, schools superintendent Ramon Cortines canceled classes and told 640,000 students to stay home. “I, as superintendent, am not going to take a chance with the life of a student,” Cortines said at a news conference that took place two weeks after terrorist attacks left 14 dead in San Bernardino, an hour’s drive from Los Angeles. Bratton characterized the closing of school on the West Coast as an overreaction, noting that such a response could compel “a series of copycat-type initiatives.” In Fairfax, Vaccarello said, the majority of threats received by the schools come from social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and anonymous apps such as Yik Yak and After School. [Teens are using a new anonymous app and most parents have no idea] In November, an After School user posted a photo of a gun and threatened that an act of violence would be “going down” at Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield. Vaccarello said the school system relies on a close partnership with the police to investigate the threats from social media apps, especially those popular with teens. But the first line of defense should be parents who talk to their children about the allure of online anonymity, which often is not anonymous at all. “I don’t think they really realize the consequences,” Vaccarello said. “The next thing they know they’ve got the police knocking on the door.” Last March, about three months after Vaccarello stepped in, a bomb threat made to Lake Braddock Secondary School forced Fairfax officials to close the school as police went room-to-room looking for an explosive device. Ultimately a teenager in Tennessee was arrested in connection with threats made to 16 schools. [Tennessee youth charged with making violent threat to Burke school] Vaccarello said his career at the Secret Service has prepared him well for his new position in Fairfax. “I protect 189,000 presidents now when you think about it,” he said. “When children are involved you don’t want things to happen.” Now Vaccarello is preparing the school system for a new era, focusing on cybersecurity and modernizing the school district’s aging buildings with video surveillance cameras and advanced door entry and locking systems. He said the goal is to make students feel safe and secure while ensuring that the schools do not resemble prisons. He acknowledges that it’s a difficult balance. After the shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007 and Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, school officials across the country have become more vigilant. The prospect of an active shooter at a Fairfax school is a security risk that Vaccarello said he considers often. He said his team is prepared as it can be. “I think about it all the time,” Vaccarello said. “We keep our doors locked and practice all these security protocols but I’d be remiss if I didn’t think that we can’t be touched by something like this. . . . But in my role I hope that it never happens.” |