CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. — The Pennsylvania School Safety Institute (PennSSI) celebrated the grand opening of its 5,000-square-foot facility Monday afternoon.
"I don't think I can put words on how important it will be for us," said Chief Christopher Raubenstein of the Silver Spring Township Police Department.
The training facility in Silver Spring Township, Cumberland County is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania, and possibly on the east coast.
PennSSI is designed to provide school districts and law enforcement from across the state with life-like, interactive simulations and classroom training to prepare them for potential security threats- anything from a disgruntled employee to an active shooter.
Trainings also focus on de-escalation tactics.
Original funding for the creation of PennSSI LLC was provided by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association Trust.
"You have a multi-room simulation that creates the feeling of being in a school building that creates different scenarios for people to go through, then a 360-degree simulation that really creates a world around you," explained Nathan Mains, CEO of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
No filming is allowed inside the facility for safety reasons but it’s set up with state-of-the-art equipment.
Everything is able to be recorded so schools and police can go back, watch, and analyze their responses together.
"School districts have been doing drills for many years based on the realities out there," said Dr. Mark Leidy, superintendent of the Mechanicsburg Area School District. "What this provides is an immersive technology that you can't recreate outside of this environment"
We’ve seen incidents where law enforcement has not responded properly to school shooting situations, like in Uvalde, Texas.
Chief Raubenstein says this facility is crucial in making sure something like that never happens here.
"You don't want to be the force that slows things up," he explained. "We need to move, we need to know what we're doing, but we need to do it well and in the proper way and the only way you do that is by training and training repeatedly.”
"I compare it to volunteer firefighters and professional firefighters," added Mains. "We want them to be out practicing, understanding how all their equipment works, understanding what to do when they pull up to a fire for the first time. This is really no different in my mind."
Currently, several police departments and school districts are doing pilot runs.
PennSSI will be open to all districts and law enforcement agencies by July 10.
While PennSSI primarily serves those with connections to a school community, the institute is also available for use by nonprofit and for-profit organizations, according to the PennSSI website.
Any group interested in utilizing the training facility can contact the PennSSI board here.
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