Students can’t be expected to learn if they don’t feel safe.
That's what Illini Bluffs School District Superintendent Roger Alvey believes, and it's why he wants students, parents and teachers to be prepared for an emergency where students need to evacuate the school and move to a new location in a hurry.
The Glasford school district last week held its first emergency reunification drill since 2018.
The drill began at the schools, where fire alarms signaled to kids that it was time to evacuate. Younger kids got loaded onto buses and older kids walked to the two local churches where parents would pick them up.
Alvey said students and parents were prepped for the drill for weeks. It’s an exercise he takes seriously.
“Ultimately, the safety of every child within this district rests with me as the superintendent,” he said. “And it's not only putting parents' minds at ease and knowing that we have a culture of safety, but we want our children to feel safe coming to school, and knowing that they're going to be taken care of no matter what we might encounter.”
Communication was the biggest weakness during the last drill held in 2018. The school's radios were overloaded with chatter, adding to confusion for teachers and parents.
This year, mobile command units were brought in. They provide stronger radios for the district to use and internet access for first responders.
Jacksonville and Morgan County Emergency Manager Phil McCarty said the units are deployed for various disasters, from active shooter threats to tornadoes.
“We don't train just for the obvious, we train for all the hazards,” McCarty said. “I think it's really important, a lot of people forget because whatever's on the news is what we are trained for, we look at all the risks.”
The units are strategically housed across the state, and it can take up to a couple hours to get them to an emergency site. Once they arrive, they stay camped for a minimum of seven days to help with the aftermath of an emergency.
Edgar Rodriguez, director of the McDonough County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, monitored the drill from one of the units. Various camera angles gave him a unique perspective when taking notes on what worked, and more importantly, what didn’t.
“We want to fail in these trials and exercises so that way when we actually need to put an in place we already know what to do in the situation,” he said.
Rodriguez said his crew is trained on reunification methods, but drills let them see what they’ve learned in action.
Across from him sat Megan Landes, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist from Western Illinois University. Her work helps first responders navigate through areas they may not know.
“We create indoor maps from blueprints into a GIS geographic information system so we can manipulate the data,” Landes said. “It's interactive, but what we have done here is we've created large printout maps of both the high school and the reunification sites.”
Landes said the maps get updated several times throughout the year to ensure their accuracy.
The two churches are a block away from each other, and less than a mile away from the schools. Students sat inside with their teachers to wait for parents and guardians to pick them up. The Friday afternoon drill meant many were antsy to go home.
Three dogs from the National Crisis Response Canines waited with them. Maia, Bosco and Serene are trained crisis canines that can be requested for anything from a natural disaster to a family crisis, free of cost.
They provide support and security for survivors. The handlers and their dogs go through training to respond in the immediate aftermath of a crisis. The extra training allows the dogs to stay focused while around emergency vehicles.
“This is actually training for us,” said Erin Hampton, a volunteer with the organization. “We're getting him around, you know the equipment that's parked outside. There's going to be many, many kids coming in their way. So that is part of their training. And yes, the kids are more than welcome to pet the dogs.”
The dogs also serve a therapeutic purpose. They were a calming presence for students waiting in the churches.
Parents and guardians picking up their kids had to give ID to teachers outside the church to prove they were authorized to pick up their student. A runner then went in to get the student while parents waited outside.
Parents then went to a different door where teachers used an identification system to ensure kids were released to the right person.
As kids exited the church to be picked up, they were greeted by Salvation Army and church volunteers handing out snacks and water.
“We're here to help support children and try to keep any anxieties down on whatever's going on,” said Daniel Bradshaw, one of the Salvation Army volunteers. “And try to take any fears away from them and try to give them comfort. Give them water and snacks, something to keep them calm.”
Bradshaw also was working inside the church with the canines to help keep kids calm. The Salvation Army also had a cart set up where students could pick out more snacks and candy.
The Salvation Army, mobile command units and canines were new additions this year. Alvey said it’s good to give everyone practice in these situations.
Eric Arnold, program director of the Illinois School On-Campus Safety program that helped coordinate the drill, said people’s fears of an attack on schools means more districts have started to adopt similar drills, but they are still rare.
“They will still have many things that they identify, kind of slips, trips and falls, areas of improvement,” Arnold said.” But they would never know that if they don't do drills and exercises like this. And that's why this is really progressive. I can tell you that most school districts, that's most, don't do this.”
Arnold hopes to never see the lessons learned during the drill in action, a sentiment shared by many in attendance.
Alvey said his next step is to meet with other superintendents in the region to present the idea of mutual aid. It's a practice utilized by many first responders to share resources and personnel in cases of emergency.
“So, the idea of mutual aid would be to train area administrators, whether that's to be a greeter out on the sidewalk, or a checker at the table, a runner or a unifier, traffic control, safety, whatever the case is,” Alvey said. “Train all the area administrators on all of those roles so that if there's an incident at a school in the area, any school in the area, and word goes out that they need help, administrators would come to that school.”
Alvey said this is particularly important for his district, where more than half of the staff have their own kids enrolled.
“I know in an actual event, those same people, their first priority is going to be to take care of their own children, and they're not going to be able to function in the role that we have assigned to them as part of this drill,” he said.
Alvey, who is also the president of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, said lessons learned in this drill will be used to create presentations for districts in the state and national conferences. They will use official notes taken during the event, as well as student and parent feedback gathered after the fact.
He said the drills combined with the creation of a “culture of safety” puts students and parents’ minds at ease. Putting everything into action ensures everyone’s prepared if an actual emergency takes place.
Alvey said some districts in the region already are conducting similar drills on a smaller scale, and he hopes to see more follow suit.
