SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Law enforcement and school administrators from counties throughout New York State are meeting in Saratoga this week to brush up on how to respond to issues like violence, bullying, and mental health.

School safety remains a focal point for the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office. More school resource officer positions were added to districts recently, including Shenendehowa and Saratoga Springs.

“We have 14 school resource officers right now, and we’ll see what happens in the next school year,” said Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo.

The multi-county conference put on by C-Pass, the Committee on Policing and Safeguarding Schools, is in its second year. The officers are brushing up on dealing with students who may be experiencing mental health difficulties, how to navigate LGBTQIA topics, and threat assessment. Recent events in other districts, like the series of hoax calls reporting false shootings at schools in Vermont earlier in February, inform their training.

“That’s been a recent uprise over the past month alone,” said Stillwater school resource officer Sean Lyons. “We discuss it, we talk at our safety meetings, and we keep that stuff in the forefront of our minds.“

The conference isn’t just for police, it’s also for educators, who are often involved in reporting potential safety issues to SROs.

“We are all over it, and we’ll get to the bottom of it relatively quickly,” Lyons said of investigating school threats, “through our liaisons with the school, our investigators, and our agencies.”

“The goal here is to have everybody working together, and have everybody in the same room for training, so we can collaborate and make sure everything works well inside the school,” said Jonathan Becker, C-Pass Program Director.

The conference runs through Thursday.