Healdsburg aims to be prepared for school shooter incidents; prevention part of the plan
With the recent deaths of students in active shooter situations in Florida and other places and accompanying concerns and protests being voiced by students and families across the country, school districts nationwide are reviewing and drilling their emergency plans, and Healdsburg is among them.
The California Department of Education provides local schools with information for managing active shooter situations. The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center has a series of recommendations, starting with training staff to respond immediately to incidents.
“Train staff to overcome denial and to respond immediately, including fulfilling their responsibilities for individuals in their charge. For example, train staff to recognize the sounds of danger, act and forcefully communicate the danger and necessary action to those in their charge,” reads the recommendations.
“In addition, those closest to the public address or other communications system, or otherwise able to alert others, should communicate the danger and necessary action. Repetition in training and preparedness shortens the time it takes to orient, observe and act. Upon recognizing the danger, as soon as it is safe to do so, staff or others must alert responders by contacting 911 with as clear and accurate information as possible.”
It recommends three courses of action, ranked based on current conditions.
The first suggestion is to run. “If it is safe to do so for yourself and those in your care, the first course of action that should be taken is to run out of the building and far away until you are in a safe location.”
According to the recommendations of the state, students and staff should be trained to:
- Leave personal belongings behind;
- Visualize possible escape routes, including physically accessible routes for students and staff with disabilities as well as persons with access and functional needs;
- Avoid escalators and elevators;
- Take others with them, but not to stay behind because others will not go;
- Call 911 when safe to do so; and
- Let a responsible adult know where they are.
If running is impractical, teachers and their charges should hide. “Students and staff should be trained to hide in a location where the walls might be thicker and have fewer windows. In addition:
- Lock the doors;
- Barricade the doors with heavy furniture;
- Close and lock windows and close blinds or cover windows;
- Turn off lights;
- Silence all electronic devices;
- Remain silent;
- Hide along the wall closest to the exit but out of the view from the hallway (allowing for an ambush of the shooter and for possible escape if the shooter enters the room);
- Use strategies to silently communicate with first responders if possible, for example, in rooms with exterior windows make signs to silently signal law enforcement officers and emergency responders to indicate the status of the room’s occupants; and
- Remain in place until given an all clear by identifiable law enforcement officers.
Finally, if neither running or hiding is an option, and “as a last resort when confronted by the shooter, adults in immediate danger should consider trying to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter by using aggressive force and items in their environment, such as fire extinguishers and chairs.”
This is a complicated and charged issue, and the California Department of Education emphasizes “While talking to staff about confronting a shooter may be daunting and upsetting for some, they should know that they may be able to successfully take action to save lives. To be clear, confronting an active shooter should never be a requirement in any school employee’s job description; how each staff member chooses to respond if directly confronted by an active shooter is up to him or her. Further, the possibility of an active shooter situation is not justification for the presence of firearms on campus in the hands of any personnel other than law enforcement officers.”
Finally, the department of education suggests educating students and staff on the role of law enforcement and other first responders in active shooter situations. “Staff should be trained to understand and expect that a law enforcement officer’s first priority must be to locate and stop the person(s) believed to be the shooter(s); all other actions are secondary. One comprehensive study determined that more than half of mass-shooting incidents were still underway when the first officer arrived; in 75 percent of those instances a solo officer had to confront the perpetrator to end the threat. In those cases, the officer was shot one-third of the time.”
“Students and staff should be trained to cooperate and not to interfere with first responders. When law enforcement officer(s) arrives, students and staff must display empty hands with open palms. Law enforcement may instruct everyone to place their hands on their heads, or they may search individuals.”
According to HUSD Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel, these new guidelines have been integrated into their drills. “We conduct trainings annually around all emergency scenarios — fire, earthquake and active threats on campus. This year, we’ve revamped our active threat training to include current strategies revolving around run/hide/fight,” he said, adding that drills take place twice a year.
HUSD staff work with local law enforcement on the run/hide/fight scenario. “The Healdsburg Police Department is always very responsive and supportive of our efforts. In the wake of the shootings in Florida, they met with our administrative staff to develop new protocols, agreed to visit each site while we conducted active threat drills to coach and give advice and will be conducting training exercises on our campuses when school is not in session to familiarize officers with our facilities,” Vanden Heuvel said. “HPD has been a model partner with the schools around school safety. We could not ask for a more supportive response.”
Vanden Heuvel says the district regularly employs between two and four private security guards for football games, which are also attended by a number of school administrators. “This has been our practice over the last three years,” he said.
Preventing a student’s fall to violence can be as important as what to do when violence erupts, and HUSD is working to provide support for students and families.
“I believe that one of the most important interventions for our nation and community when it comes to this issue is focusing on early identification and intervention of students and community members that are suffering from mental health issues and need genuine support,” Vanden Heuvel said.
“Relationships are key,” he continued. “We have relatively small schools enabling strong relationships between students and staff that results in a very trusting environment. Indeed, one of our primary goals is for every student to be well known. Thus, our students feel safe and empowered to approach staff with concerns around social media. Students are, by far, the most effective way of monitoring social media.”
Technology is also being implemented to help with monitoring and reporting.
“We also are working on implementation of a new app at both Healdsburg Junior High and Healdsburg High School called STOPit,” Vanden Heuvel said. “This app, provides a quick, easy and anonymous way for students to report any type of concern or behavior directly to a school administrator.”
