School district discusses preparedness in 'Keep Students Safe' report

As parents, students, teachers, and staff know, school safety is a prevalent concern these days. School violence, specifically school shootings remain a concern. During the January 18 Matanuska Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) school board meeting, Jim Estes, Director of Operations presented the annual “Keep Students Safe” report, outlining and highlighting preparedness.

Last week, the focus was on prevention and this week, the focus turns to preparedness.

“Unlike prevention, preparedness is more tangible,” Estes explained, adding that on the business side of operations, preparedness is all about .

With the emergency management framework, there are 3 lines of effort that can support schools and school leadership-preparedness, response, and infrastructure. “Infrastructure is needed to make the other 2 lines work”

“Some of the ways we do that really in preparedness from an operational perspective. There’s three things that we do-we provide adequate, relevant training and education, not only to staff, but leadership and students.”

Preparedness s includes periodic, recurring site assessments by trained safety and security personnel. During the fall semester of each school year, safety, security, and facility compliance personnel complete an annual site assessment of each school, typically alongside the building administrator (principal).

All MSBSD schools complete monthly fire drills and ALICE, bomb, and earthquake drills each semester.

Estes pointed to the on-site expertise of the SSC and SRO programs as examples of restoring support crisis response. The MSBSD expanded the SRO program from one officer in 2005, to four officers in 2022. SROs are currently serving at Palmer High School, Colony High School, Wasilla High School. Staffing within the Wasilla Police Department forced the WPD to pull the SRO assigned to the Houston Jr/Sr High School but there is hope that the SRO will be restored soon.

“In the last 2 weeks, we have executed a memorandum of agreement with the Alaska State Troopers and Wasilla PD who provide law enforcement officer annexes on the Houston (Jr/Sr High School) site, as well as Su Valley. We’re seeing what that looks like, how quickly we can do it. Our goal is to have both those in place by the end of this summer to support next year’s school year,” Estes told the board.

Each SRO provides support to neighboring district schools, drastically reducing incident response time. The district is hopeful for a future expansion of the SRO program, having met with officials from the City of Wasilla, City of Palmer, and the Alaska State Troopers last year to discuss the expansion of SRO coverage at Joe Redington Sr. Jr/Sr High School and Mat-Su Career & Technical High School in the fall of 2023.

The MSBSD will be expanding the School Safety Coordinators (SSC) program to 12 full-time positions, adding coordinators at Mat-Su Career & Technical High School, and Su-Valley Sr/Jr High School (covering northern schools, including Trapper Creek Elementary and Talkeetna Elementary). Additionally, SSCs will be part of an organizational change that allows the district to more efficiently organize, direct, and evaluate the program’s support for all schools.

All principals are trained on the roles and responsibilities for managing school crises with the latest updates to Incident Command Systems (ICS)-100 and best practices. The ICS is a standardized, on-scene, all-risk management concept. ICS allows its users to adopt an integrated organizational structure to match the complexities and demands of single or multiple incidents without being hindered by jurisdictional boundaries.

MSBSD implemented new school violence training models for staff beginning in the 2018-2019 school year. As part of active intruder, ALICE training, staff utilize a blended learning approach with online learning in conjunction with school drills. This blended model supports training for new employees as well as annual recertification for all other staff.

Additionally, MSBSD welcome parents to come and see ALICE drills taking place in their child’s school.

In the event a response is needed, MSBSD incorporates emergency radio communications at each school site. All schools evaluate and update campus-specific Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) annually. These EOPs include evacuation, shelter-in-place, and parent reunification plans. All schools have a crisis response team for emergencies that are critical to executing emergency drills.

In addition to emergency radios, MSBSD maintains a mobile app for building administrators and other key personnel. This planning and communications platform, known as CrisisGo, is an app on all school leaders’ cell phones, that allows administrators to quickly access emergency response plans, all checklists, and school maps. The app also provides the ability to report emergencies, call for help, and stay connected during a crisis.

School safety infrastructure has significantly improved over the past decade. MSBSD implemented and maintains 14 major safety and security infrastructure standards across the district.

A few of the standards include keyless access control systems that are used to access District facilities and arm and disarm the intrusion detection system tracks and logs card access; video doorbell and remote lock and unlock allows schools to keep doors locked during the day, admitting only those visitors that have

been screened by the school's front office staff; intrusion detection system, which is used to protect facilities against crime and vandalism and includes motion detection, open exterior doors and windows, and glass break sensors.

In the event of duress and lockdown calls, a duress station activation system calls a third-party monitoring company and the police while automatically activating the facility exterior strobe emergency indicator and remotely locks exterior doors; plays a pre-recorded system announcement school-wide; and closes interior hold-open doors.

There are other systems in place such as security cameras, intercoms, AEDs, interior roll-down gates, and fencing and gates.

“We recognize that we can’t just implement those, we have to be able to support those things, primarily through the Facilities and IT departments. We have to provide the expertise the training to those folks to maintain and sustain those systems throughout the district,” Estes said.

MSBSD also has an ongoing capital improvement process in place to address new safety and security needs. To help meet capital infrastructure needs, the School Board authorized $400,000 in safety and security upgrades over the past two fiscal years.

Where will MSBSD go from here with regards to keeping kids safe? The district will continue to emphasize the importance of prevention, which includes a continued focus on curriculum, relationship building, and disciplinary procedures. Examples of programs include social emotional learning at the secondary level and Positive Action at the elementary level. There are also some key initiatives for the next 5 years.

For the current fiscal year, the district hopes to continue expanding the School Safety Coordinator (SSC) Program to 12 full-time positions by adding coordinators at Mat-Su Career & Technical High School and Su-Valley Sr/Jr High School. The SSC assigned to Su-Valley Sr/Jr High School who will also provide coverage for Talkeetna Elementary and Trapper Creek Elementary.

As parents and students have already experienced this winter, MSBSD has relied on remote learning instead of cancelling classes during inclement weather, and with that, another initiative will be the utilization of the at-home internet filtering the district’s official classroom management system is GoGuardian Teacher, which allows teachers to monitor student devices while class is in session. Additionally, the District has acquired GoGuardian Admin which ensures 24/7 web filtering for internet content, blocking access to obscene or harmful material. GoGuardian Admin also provides for a simple to use app that allows parents/guardians to monitor their child’s internet activity, limit hours for internet browsing, and provides for additional web filtering outside school hours.

There will also be an emphasis on ensuring ICS training for all principals, including ICS-100 completion for all new principals, and refresher training every five years thereafter.

Other long-term initiatives for the next few years include expanding the current SRO program, ongoing annual interagency coordination active scenario trainings such as Alaska SHIELD and the Great Alaska Shakeout, tabletop training exercises and other “hands-on” training to school administrators and other government agencies, all in an effort to train and refine plans and procedures with key stakeholders. And to continue to host principal training for school safety topics, which will allow principals to cover new safety and security initiatives, review standard operating procedures, and analyze emerging trends, and encourage collaboration with district administrators and local experts on techniques and best practices in keeping schools safe.