School starts back next month and, like every year, many parents may experience some anxiety about being separated from their children during the day.
According to a Gallup poll from 2022, 44 percent of parents surveyed said they “feared for their children’s physical safety at school.” It is understandable why. Worst-case scenarios are what make the news. But local school employees and first responders work around the clock to ensure these worst-case headlines never come out of Adair County.
Just last Friday, a mix of around 40 school employees and first responders met at the Cooperative Extension Office for an annual review of school safety protocols. They went through mock emergency situations and ensured all procedures and protocols are foolproof and by-the-book.
Director of Pupil Personnel Robbie Harmon says that the county takes an “all hazards approach,” meaning they prepare for every possibility no matter how unlikely.
Cases like what happened at Uvalde and Stoneman Douglas make national headlines because they are tragic, but also because they are uncommon.
The most likely emergency situations any given year at a school are medical (a teacher’s glucose level drops or a student suffers a seizure) or environmental (severe weather). Intruder scenarios are certainly prepared for under the “all hazards approach,” but the school district and first responders work to make sure every possibility has a plan and a protocol. Even earthquakes are covered with this umbrella approach.
The other benefit of the all hazards approach is the interconnectedness of emergencies.
Harmon gave the following example to indicate how much overlap there can be in one scenario: “Let’s say we had a fire at Adair County Middle School. There’s gonna be fire, we know that… there (may be) injuries. There’s going to be reunification. There’s going to be all of those things. Then there’s fire department. Then there’s police… There’s going to be EMS… so if we look at things in isolation, then they stay in isolation. But if we look at an all hazards approach, then all of a sudden, in an active emergency, there’s not just one emergency. If we look at it as just an earthquake, we would never involve EMS. So the (all hazards approach) actually makes it easier because we’re already addressing so many things.”
The first line of defense is always the teachers and staff who are ready to take care of their students.
“I don’t have a problem saying everyone in the building is going to protect a kid,” said Adam Cravens, Adair County High School Student Resource Officer.
According to Harmon, there are well over 100 cameras on school grounds that Adair County 911 has access to. This means if a teacher has a medical emergency or if a fire is reported or an intruder gains access to the school and the location is not adequately given, dispatchers can tap into the cameras and see where exactly the emergency is occurring.
“We have to react to the emergency, but we try to be proactive ahead of time. Our number one job is prevention. If we can be proactive and prevent an emergency, then we’ve done our jobs,” Harmon said.
For an example of proactivity, Cravens said, “When I have to report a maintenance issue that could be a safety issue…that day, it’s getting addressed. It’s getting fixed.”
Safety is not just a priority for Adair County. Harmon believes that Kentucky is “leading the nation” in safety through laws such as the School Safety and Resiliency Act (signed into law in 2019) and a Title XIII statue which dictates all schools must adopt emergency response plans, conduct emergency drills, and maintain portable defibrillators.
“We get monitored from the state. They send people in to walk through our schools,” Harmon said.
One of the things even students can do to help keep their schools safe is to use the STOP tip line available at the bottom of the district’s website (adair.kyschools.us/). The tip line is operated by the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security. Mostly intended for reporting “bullying, violence, and risky behavior,” Harmon and Cravens said everyone is encouraged to report anything odd or out of the ordinary.
“If you see something, say something,” Harmon said.
By Kenley Godby
kenley@adairvoice.com
