School employees train for emergency situations

Before returning to school, all Havre Public School employees learned new safety protocols meant to help handle armed intruders, bomb threats and other similar possible dangers.

School resource Officer Josh Holt of the Havre Police Department gave the same Standard Response Protocol presentations three times Monday and Tuesday, just in time for the first day of school today.

A bulk of the presentation concentrated on the differences between lockout and lockdown and what to do in case of each one.

A lockout means the threat is outside, Holt said, supplementing many of his points with a PowerPoint presentation. In case of a lockout, all students return and stay inside, the perimeter doors are locked and it's "business as usual" in the classroom, but teachers are asked to be alert and pay attention to attendance.

A lockdown means the threat is inside. Students are to move out of sight - lock themselves in a room - and keep silent and away from windows. Teachers lock the classroom doors, turn out the lights, keep up with attendance and open the door only after officers have been positively identified.

Teachers who were in the 10 a.m. training session Tuesday in the high school auditorium asked questions about when to call a lockout or lockdown. Holt and district superintendent Andy Carlson gave examples such as if students report something suspicious outside, or if gunshots are heard, if a convict gets loose in the city, or the obvious - if someone spots an armed intruder.

"Better safe than sorry," Carlson told one teacher who asked what to do if he wasn't sure if the threat was real.

Holt and Carlson told teachers they would be entrusted to make some decisions, if need be, once they have enough information about the situation.

Holt emphasized that teachers, in the event of the crisis, ask their students to wait five minutes before sending out that "mass blast" - a text message telling friends or parents that there's a problem. Five minutes should be enough time to determine if the crisis is real or needs to be taken seriously. Then students can systematically, by group, notify their parents and let them know they are OK, Holt said.

The Standard Response Protocol was developed by the I Love U Guys Foundation, whose founders, John-Michael and Ellen Keyes, lost their daughter Emily Sept. 27, 2006, when a gunman entered Platte Canyon High School, held seven girls hostage and ultimately shot and killed Emily Keyes.

During the time she was held hostage, Emily sent her parents the text messages, "I love you guys" and "I love u guys. K?"

The Keyes wanted a standard response protocol to any event that could happen in a school, "from an active shooter to someone outside the school to a natural disaster," Holt said. When John-Michael Keyes looked up safety protocols, he found many responses with many different approaches. So he set out to develop a standard that can be applied across the board.

"This program developed because there was a need for it," Holt said.

Holt said he spent a week in Columbine, Colorado, in July for training. He said he heard from people who were there when the Columbine High School shooting happened,  from those who there for the Arapahoe High shooting, a counselor from Sandy Hook High School, and a woman from Virginia Tech. He called it a "pretty intense week."

The changes to the response protocol is supposed to alleviate a lot of the questions, Holt said.

"When they hear lockdown they're going to know what a lockdown is. A lockdown is not going to be a medical emergency in the hallway, it's not going to be the defiant kid in the classroom. A lockdown means there is a serious threat in the building," Holt said. "Hopefully, it'll be communicated through the administration within a couple minutes of the event happening. ... Hopefully it'll go out in the alert system to the parents ."

Holt said there are plans for further in-depth training. District employees are going to go through Alert Lockdown Inform Counter Evacuate, or ALICE, active shooter training.

"By the end of this school year, every single person in the school district will have that training," he said.