When a critical incident unfolds at a school, the last thing anybody wants is confusion in dealing with the situation.
That includes school officials, law enforcement and families using different terminology in working through the incident as well as relating to each other about the emergency.
Lt. Chris Madle, Shawano County’s emergency management director, is working with all county school districts to ensure everyone is on the same page.
“Every school has their different terminology they use when it comes to soft lockdown, hard lockdown, secure, hold, everything like this,” Madle said. “This Standard Response Protocol (SRP) … puts the same language, same lingo to every single one of our school districts in the whole county.”
The SRP is a common language and set of actions used to respond to critical incidents. The SRP is based on best practices from first responders, psychologists, school administrators, families and public safety experts.
The SRP is not a replacement for a school’s safety plan or program.
Madle and other officers were trained in the SRP in August and are ready to share it with school staff.
“We’re now working with each individual school district to have them jump on board,” Madle said. “It’s completely free to the school districts. All the materials are completely free; the training is free.”
School boards will have to adopt the protocol, and then staff will be trained.
“The biggest thing with this is it gets every first responder agency, every school district on the same page countywide,” Madle said. “So, one school isn’t doing something one way, another school doing something a different way. It puts us on the same page as the schools between your patrol officers, your dispatchers, your school admin.”
It was presented to Shawano school staff at a professional development day in August. The protocol will be rolled out to Bowler, Gresham and Tigerton staff at a joint event Oct. 14.
Wittenberg-Birnamwood will adopt the SRP but will coordinate their own training, Madle said. Bonduel will host a training Sept. 27.
After the public school district staff are trained, Madle will work with private schools Sacred Heart and St. James in Shawano, St. Paul in Bonduel and Shepherd’s Watch Christian Academy in Mattoon.
Another part of the program is the standard reunification method to connect parents with their children after an incident.
“We have to reunify all these kids with their parents somehow. Obviously, if we have an active scene at a school, we can’t have all the parents come to the school and pick up their kids there,” Madle said. “We have to have something called reunification in place, where we have sites established. We have to have a process of checking the parents in, making sure the kids get with the right parent. Obviously, it’s going to the be worst day of those parents’ lives if we ever have to do this, so we have to have a way to mitigate some of the chaos.”
Reunification requires organization and materials like tables, chair, signage, name tags, paperwork and more.
Madle has a long-term goal of collecting donations from businesses and organizations to buy these materials and an enclosed trailer to house them. The trailer could then be transported to any district in need, without every district having to have their own materials.
Critical incidents can include active shooters, tornadoes or other severe weather, hazardous materials and more.
The SRP uses five terms to describe specific actions that can be taken during an incident:
• Hold. Used to keep hallways clear of people when there is a safety concern, such as a medical emergency or physical altercation.
• Secure. Used when there is a threat outside the building, such as an emergency in the neighborhood.
• Lockdown. Used when there is a threat inside the building.
• Evacuate. Used to move people from one location to another, either in or out of the building.
• Shelter. Used when personal protection is needed, such as during a tornado or hazmat incident.
The SRP was developed by the I Love U Guys Foundation, which was created by John-Michael Keyes and Ellen-Stoddard Keyes after the death of their daughter, Emily Keyes, at Platte Canyon High School in 2006.
On Sept. 27, 2006, Duane Morrison, 53, took seven female students hostage and sexually assaulted them, later releasing four. When police broke open the classroom door with explosives, Morrison opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol before shooting hostage Emily Keyes in the head. The other remaining hostages escaped unharmed, and paramedics confirmed that Morrison had committed suicide shortly before police were able to enter the classroom. Keyes was pronounced dead at a Denver hospital after undergoing emergency surgery.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
Categories
