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by fire, a school safety plan worked Lockdown drills paid off Feb. 9 
Feb. 25, 2004 Related stories:
When it was time to batten down the hatches at Columbia High after the Feb. 9 shooting of a teacher, school leaders and safety coordinator Henry Kolakoski were at the helm within minutes, enacting an oft-rehearsed lockdown plan. After Kolakoski made the announcement from the main office for the school to go on lockdown, "I looked out and the place was abandoned. It was like a ghost town. It was that fast," said the social studies teacher, a member of the East Greenbush Teachers Association. The East Greenbush school system takes safety seriously. Its district safety plan involves drills, regular communication with a myriad of local emergency responders, and staff training. On Feb. 9, a 16-year-old brought a shotgun into the high school and fired three shots, injuring a teacher. In the 10 days after the shooting, school officials had already held critique sessions on the response. As New York Teacher went to press, Kolakoski said plans had been approved to install alarms on every door at the high school except the supervised main entrance. Alarms are set to go off any time someone enters or leaves through those doors, an issue of focus due to speculation about how the teen-ager brought the rifle into the school. "We'll make significant changes as we evaluate the problems," Kolakoski said. The school was also dealing with the challenges of an ongoing $46 million renovation project, which meant heavy equipment and dozens of construction workers on the scene. New classrooms are being built, the gym and auditorium are being renovated, and a new, curved main entrance is being built. Safety leaders in the district work with four local police agencies, state police, sheriff's department, four ambulance crews and eight fire departments because of the suburban district's sprawl. School officials meet with officers of these agencies both in the spring and again in the fall, said Kolakoski, a former president of the East Greenbush Teachers Association. Police, fire and EMS responders are brought into the schools for in-service programs. The school's own psychological staff train other staffers. New-teacher orientation features two hours on safety, including evacuation of students with disabilities and code words signifying a situation with bombs, assault or weapons within a school. The district practices age-appropriate drills for weapons, bomb threats and hostage situations; some involving emergency responders. "After each drill, we debrief at each site to see what they could do differently," said Terrance Brewer, East Greenbush superintendent. "Follow-up is crucial." Planning and cooperation paid off on Feb. 9. The safe outcome of the shooting incident, Brewer said, "is reflective of what we put into our safety plan." "The ingenuity that some of these teachers displayed flabbergasted me," Kolakoski said, explaining how teachers barricaded their doors with tables and bookcases and covered up windows. "It could have been a whole lot worse." During the incident, when one teacher suffered from shortness of breath and lightheadedness, Kolakoski retrieved one of the district's more than 50 Automated External Defibrillators, and then health office staff responded. The equipment was not used, but it was on hand because East Greenbush went beyond New York's legislation calling for an AED in every building, Kolakoski noted. That law passed a couple years ago after persistent lobbying by New York State United Teachers. Project SAVE A school safety plan was sketched out in 1995, Kolakoski said, revised in 1998 and again in 2001, after the state Legislature passed the Safe Schools Act, or Project SAVE. The law, also backed by NYSUT, calls for codes of conduct, school safety measures, evacuation planning, intruder drills, violence prevention training, character education and bully prevention programs. In early March, Brewer said, he will reconvene the district's SAVE committee, which includes parents, students, emergency personnel and school officials. "School safety is a full partnership among the administration, the school board, the local union and the community," Kolakoski said. "People have to do the planning and make it a full partnership." - Liza Frenette |
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