Hall Monitors

Local schools prepared, vigilant in ongoing quest to keep students safe

For years now, students have learned catchy mantras to help them respond to potential emergencies.

Fire? Stop, drop and roll.

Earthquake? Duck, cover and hold.

But when it comes to threats from other people, school safety can be summed up in two words: preparation and vigilance.

"Nothing is perfect, but we're vigilant. We're very vigilant," said Flathead County Superintendent of Schools Marcia Sheffels. "We're really doing everything that we can to make sure our kids have a safe environment."

This includes working closely with the Flathead County Sheriff's Office and local police departments. Local law enforcement agencies began taking a more proactive approach to protecting students and teachers soon after the Columbine shooting, said Patrol Sgt. Dave Leib of the Flathead County Sheriff's Office.

Part of that active approach has involved SWAT team training at area schools. The team has trained at a number of schools, including Evergreen Junior High, Fair-Mont-Egan School and, most recently, Columbia Falls High School.

The team trained last week in Columbia Falls to prepare for potential hostile intruders. Team members were fully clad in protective gear, complete with helmets, radios and (unloaded) guns.

SWAT team members moved cautiously through the high school's empty halls; ideally, the halls would be just as vacant during an actual crisis. The team practiced handling multiple situations, including one reminiscent of last October's Amish school shooting: a suspect barricading himself in a room and refusing to surrender.

In addition to helping team members hone their skills, the exercise was an opportunity for law enforcement officials to familiarize themselves with the school. During the first practice situation, the team went into the building cold, with only a general sense of the layout.

"It's important for us to have an idea what the layout of the school is like," Leib said.

Each local law enforcement office has blueprints of all the county's schools, said Jodie Barber, a counselor at Kalispell Junior High School. But during a real crisis, there may not be time to swing by the office for the maps, making the SWAT team's trainings an important component of school safety.

This year, the sheriff's office and Montana Highway Patrol initiated the Adopt-a-School program, further enabling law enforcement officials to familiarize themselves with the schools - and vice versa. Deputies and troopers "adopt" areas schools and try to visit during their regular routes.

They aren't school resource officers, Sheffels explained; they aren't constantly on campus. But the program has given teachers and administrators a "personal law enforcement contact," and students have had the opportunity to build relationships with deputies and troopers.

A few schools have given feedback on the program, Sheffels said, "with an overwhelming positive response."

The increased cooperation between schools and law enforcement is a fairly recent development, said Todd Mertz, school resource officer at Columbia Falls High School.

When Mertz began his job in fall 2005, he sought to make the school's disaster-preparedness plans more compatible with Flathead County's. If there is an emergency that isn't immediately life-threatening at a Columbia Falls school, sheriff's deputies will be the ones to respond.

"I went to the administration and said, 'This is how the county's training. We should maybe follow suit, because they're the ones who are going to be responding," Mertz said.

Schools used to call when they wanted law enforcement present, he said. Now resource officers are commonplace, and communication between officers and administrators is ongoing.

"We ask, what does the administration see as a priority? This is what law enforcement sees as a priority, and here's how we're going to handle it," Mertz said.

Schools have ramped up security on their own, as well as partnering with law enforcement.

Teachers always have placed a priority on safety, Sheffels said. But as times have changed - particularly in the post-Columbine era - so have schools' approaches to safety.

"I think Columbine was, yes, perhaps an awakening call," she said. "Our awareness was heightened about what could happen."

Background checks are required for each employee, Sheffels said, and each school has an emergency plan in place and on file in the superintendent's office. Those plans are reviewed annually, she said.

"Our systems and our procedures in place are very progressive," she said. "We're always looking, revising and adapting."

A recent adaptation is keeping school buildings locked during the day. Only one door is open so everyone who enters must walk by the front office.

"Schools are being designed or rearranged in ways so there is maximum security at the entrance and exit points," Sheffels said.

Some schools have added electronic surveillance as well; in settings such as cafeterias where there are large, disorganized groups of students, cameras can be particularly effective. But on the whole, Sheffels said, simply being aware of everyone who enters the school is more effective than cameras.

"Not surveillance but vigilance," she said. "Once again, that's our key."

While the possibility for violence has always existed in schools, the threat's manifestation has changed. Bullying a younger student out of lunch money or hitting someone on the playground is still a problem. Unfortunately, so is the possibility of a student bringing a weapon to school.

LAST YEAR, nearly 3,100 Montana high-school students took the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a questionnaire sponsored by the Office of Public Instruction that covers everything from drugs and alcohol to nutrition and exercise.

According to the survey, more than 300 students had a weapon such as a gun, knife or club on school property at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey. More than 150 had a weapon on school property six or more days. Nearly 250 students were threatened or injured with a weapon at least once during that same time frame.

That is a school's primary threat, Barber said.

"You practice for earthquakes, you may get a fire, but natural disasters aren't the biggest threats," she said. "The angry student is more a reality. Unfortunately, that's the reality of the world that we live in."

High-fatality incidents like that at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which 14 students and a teacher died, attract the most media attention, but Montana isn't exempt from tragedy, Barber said.

"Crisis, I think, is something we put on the back burner because we think it can't ever happen to us," she said.

In 1986, when Barber was a student at Fergus High School in Lewistown, a 14-year-old classmate killed a substitute teacher and injured two students and the vice principal. In 1994, a 10-year-old boy shot and killed a fellow student on the Margaret Leary Elementary School playground in Butte.

But it's the big shootings that have served as catalysts for changes in school-safety procedures.

"Amidst the tragedies of the school shootings, we do learn from them," Sheffels said.

But no amount of learning, preparation or vigilance can guarantee safety.

"All of us are very practical," Sheffels said. "We realize there's not a perfect security out there."

Should a violent crime occur on school grounds, resources are in place to help students and staff deal with the tragedy. One resource is the Flathead Valley Quick Response Team, which Barber helped organize.

The team formed a few years ago when a group of counselors decided to make sure every school in the valley had the same disaster-preparedness information, including procedures and emergency phone numbers. The group coordinated with police and fire departments and emergency services to organize that information, Barber said.

The goal, she said, is to have contact information readily available and for emergency procedures to become second nature.

"In reality, if you had someone [a shooter] come in, it would be chaos no matter what," she said. "Most of the time, you're just going to do what's instinct."

Once the crisis is over, teachers can call the quick-response team for support. Teams of counselors will go to the school to help students and staff deal with the aftermath.

"That way, we can get back to everyday life rather than flying by the seat of our pants," Barber said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com