{"id":108358,"date":"2015-11-09T18:38:32","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T01:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/are-re-1-schools-safe-you-bet-says-police-chief\/"},"modified":"2015-11-09T18:38:32","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T01:38:32","slug":"are-re-1-schools-safe-you-bet-says-police-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/are-re-1-schools-safe-you-bet-says-police-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Re-1 schools safe? \u2018You bet,\u2019 says police chief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Cortez Fire Protection District hosted a regional exercise on Tuesday to train for a hazardous response near the Cortez Middle School.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

What is the worst-case scenario for local school safety?<\/p>\n

\u201cAn active shooter in one of our schools is my worst fear,\u201d said Cortez Police Chief Roy Lane. \u201cIt keeps me up at nights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would echo that,\u201d added Kemper Elementary principal Jamie Haukeness. \u201cIt\u2019s my largest concern as a school administrator.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Journal recently met with the Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 school safety task force, which consists of Lane, Haukeness, Cortez Fire assistant chief Charles Balke, Cortez 911 dispatch manager Lori Johnson and San Juan BOCES safe schools coordinator Kathy Morris.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince Columbine, the way law enforcement handles an active shooter has changed 180 degrees,\u201d said Lane.<\/p>\n

Before Columbine, Lane said, law enforcement protocol consisted of a wait-and-see approach. Today, officers immediately enter the building, he said. \u201cYou have to take care of the problem before we can take care of the kids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Haukeness said teachers and staff have been trained to go into lockdown, which launches a 911 call and bridges school, police and fire communication systems.<\/p>\n

In 2006, the Re-1 district established the task force, charged to identify the cracks in school safety. Communication between school officials and first responders was the major concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lacked direct communication with law enforcement,\u201d Haukeness said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we got into one of the buildings, we had no communication with dispatch,\u201d Lane added. \u201cWe discovered that a police officer or firefighter inside a building was completely isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials realized that school and first responders had radios that operated on different frequencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to be able to bridge those radios together,\u201d said Morris, adding that daily communication tests were conducted.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, teachers can talk directly to a first responder during any emergency,\u201d Haukeness said.<\/p>\n

According to Morris, the Re-1 district is one of only nine across Southwest Colorado to have fully deployed the bridged communication capabilities, adding that only two schools in Durango had such a system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to be proactive instead of reactive,\u201d added Balke. \u201cWe wanted to look out for what could happen one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to improved communication capabilities, Haukeness said that all schools across the district have now been retrofitted with buzzer and camera systems, meaning anyone entering a facility must be \u201cbuzzed in\u201d by a school official. Kemper Elementary installed the system last year, the last schoolhouse to include the safety feature.<\/p>\n

Exterior schoolhouse doors have also been numbered to aid first responders when responding to an emergency. Haukeness said those numbered doors help to streamline an emergency response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that we\u2019ve gone to great lengths to make students and staff as safe as possible,\u201d said Haukeness. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the community fully understands how much time we\u2019ve spent,\u201d added Lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraining is constant,\u201d said Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchools are required to do a safety drill every 30 days,\u201d said Morris.<\/p>\n

Local officials have also trained for natural disasters, bus accidents, animals on campus, pandemics and hazardous spills or explosions.<\/p>\n

Another piece to the school safety puzzle is the Safe 2 Tell program, a strategic initiative of the Colorado Department of Law and Office of the Attorney General. The anonymous tipline \u2013 877-542-SAFE \u2013 allows students to report threatening behaviors or activities while notifying police and school officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids are our best defense,\u201d said Haukeness. \u201cThey let us know of unsafe situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haukesness said the tipline was utilized during summer school when a student reported that a friend was contemplating suicide. Haukeness said the child\u2019s life was spared because of the anonymous call.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want every kid to go home safely every night,\u201d Haukness said.<\/p>\n

Asked to grade the district\u2019s safety preparedness plans, Lane was quick to reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re asking if we\u2019d be ready to answer any call tomorrow, you bet,\u201d said Lane. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

tbaker@the-journal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

district task force reviews safety programs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[21,13,216,3443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-school-safety"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108358"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}