Response team offers schools protection
Since 2013, there have been over 200 school shootings in America — an average of nearly one a week. Research shows that a typical response time to an active shooter event is between three and five minutes. To give you a clearer perspective, the event at Sandy Hook Elementary School was five minutes in duration, during which 26 lives were taken; twenty students, six staff members with an average of one person being shot and killed every 11.5 seconds.
For parents and many people these statistics are unsettling. As a superintendent and, most importantly, a parent of two children, these numbers are unacceptable. We should all feel secure in sending our children to school — comforted by the knowledge that they’re safe. This is one of the main reasons the Mad River Board of Education and my administrative team concluded something needed to be done in our district to make sure ALL of our students and staff were safe when they entered our school buildings.
In July 2016, the Mad River Board of Education approved a resolution to allow for response teams in our buildings. As far as the research behind the decision, the process began at the Ohio School Board Association Conference in the fall of 2015. Several school districts around the state spoke about their move toward a response team based on school shootings that have statistically increased in frequency over the past 10 years. From there, we looked into FBI data on school shootings. A review of police response to the massacre at Sandy Hook found that, “History teaches that the typical active shooter only stops when confronted, the quicker the confrontation the better.”
From there, we met with both the Montgomery County Sheriff ’s Department and the Riverside Police Department to discuss what the reality is as far as response time and if there were an active shooter event versus having a response team in the building who could address the situation immediately. We then met with two school districts who have response teams currently. We researched their rationale, discussed training, ongoing training, and looked at an SRO (School Resource Officer) versus training staff.
During that same time period, the first school shooting in this area took place at Middletown Madison in 2016 (about 30 minutes away from Dayton). At that point, our board decided that the ALICE training our district participated in was not enough to protect our students. Based on our research and the data we collected, we would proceed with an additional layer to our safety plan, which led to the Board of Education passing the resolution in the summer of 2016 allowing for a response team.
After the resolution passed, the planning phase took place in regards to creating a rigorous interview process in collaboration with the Montgomery County Sherriff ’s Office (who helped interview candidates). Volunteers were interviewed and 32 were identified to move on to the next step of the process. Each candidate had to possess a CCW at the time of the interview, then complete and qualify based on the same standards as Ohio peace officers.
With all that said, we have made the decision to protect our students, staff and community with the ability for trained staff to access a firearm in order to respond to a threat. We know if there’s somebody who is determined to cause harm, they will find a way to do it. But hopefully, with another layer of protection we will prevent it and protect our students and staff.