Leadership Matters - May 2013

“ Some of our schools did not want to do drills that included students. I think it is a major mistake not to include kids in the drills… The good news, of course, is that no one was

Lessons Learned

injured. We know that if there had been an injury the dynamics of dealing with parents, students and the media that day might have been completely different ” - - Dr. Gary C. Niehaus, superintendent of McLean County Unit District 5

McLean story ——————————————————

bad information, and also to make sure the media is receiving information from a consistent school source. He said the media covered the event in a way that was responsible and also helped to get the word out that no one had been injured – the most important fact of the entire episode. “Like I said, if someone had been injured, I don’t know if people would have been so calm,” Niehaus said. Security issues revisited after incident Administrators in the McLean County school district have spent the months following the shooting incident upgrading their emergency response plans and also taking a new look at things such as:  Keeping the school building entrances locked at all times.  Having adults and perhaps even students wear ID badges. The Normal Police Department after- action recommendations included having school district custodians, maintenance and delivery personnel wear ID badges.  Both Normal Community and Normal West high schools are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on most school days, meaning that they are open longer than security guards are available. Restricting access to certain parts of the buildings now is in place.  While the outside security of the district’s buildings is pretty solid with locked access doors and security cameras, administrators have been rethinking security inside the buildings, including adding thumb locks to doors that did not have them and considering requiring students’ backpacks to be of the see-through mesh variety.

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“As many people did, State Farm called and offered to help in any way they could. We asked them to make our announcements there because so many of our parents are employed there. It’s something to think about in communities that have a large employer like that,” Brown said. Communications inside Normal Community High were limited for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was security driven. “We don’t make announcements in the school during something like this because you don’t know if someone is making an announcement under duress, and our plan is not to have students just evacuate if someone pulls a fire alarm,” Brown said. During a school shooting years ago in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the perpetrators pulled a fire alarm and then shot students as they filed out of the school building. Instead, the McLean County district’s response plan is predicated on the use of codes. Managing media relations equal parts luck and planning Probably the best move administrators made with regard to keeping the media informed was to schedule a 1 p.m. press conference at the district office, a few miles away from the school and the evacuation/reunification site. The press had swarmed outside the reunification site in the first few hours looking for students to interview. “Having the press conference here kind of drew everyone away from the reunification site. They missed a lot of the dismissal of students from that site,” Niehaus said. “The timing was a little luck and a little planning.” Niehaus said holding regular press briefings is a must to combat the normal spread of rumors and

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