History

In July of 2021, WCSU received appropriations from the State of Connecticut to establish the Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation. Subsequently, we entered into an agreement with the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to provide school safety services to all schools in the state via the Center, which was approved by the Board of Regents on December 16, 2021.

Before the Center was established, school safety services were provided to schools in the western part of the state as far back as 2014 by Professor Gabriel Lomas, then working in the counseling program in the Department of Education and Educational Psychology. Dr. Lomas had been doing extensive school safety work for many years in Texas and was familiar with various models due to his connections in states across the nation. Months after the school shootings on December 14, 2012, Dr. Lomas met with the members of the Western Connecticut Superintendents Association and obtained their support for the development of a regional crisis team, a model that offers organized mutual aid after a crisis. The first meeting of the Western Connecticut Regional Crisis Team (RCT) was in March of 2014 with directors of pupil services for eight school districts clustered around the Danbury area. In May of 2014, the Western CT RCT held its first meeting and has met monthly, nine months each year, since that time.

Early in the development of the RCT, he collaborated with Social Work professor, Rebecca Wade-Rancourt, who co-chaired meetings and helped with deployments. In 2018, Dr. Paula Gill Lopez, Professor of School Psychology at Fairfield University, joined Dr. Lomas in his efforts to establish the Center. Dr. Gill Lopez established the CT School Safety and Crisis Response Committee which also met monthly and provided a forum for school personnel across the state to attend trainings and have discussions on safety and crisis as relevant to their respective districts.

In December of 2021, Dr. Amery Bernhardt was hired to be the first Director of the Center. Dr. Bernhardt was a recent retiree from the Westchester County Department of Public Safety, where he supervised the School Resource Officer program for four districts. Additionally, Dr. Bernhardt completed his graduate studies in Homeland Security and a Doctor of Management degree with a concentration in Homeland Security.  His thesis focused on school safety, and he completed a dissertation focusing on multidisciplinary school threat assessment teams.