Teachers, administrators learn to prevent, react

Administrators and teachers must act quickly with an active school shooter.

“When [police officers] are notified of a school shooting, help can be up to five minutes away and those minutes matter,” Fryhoff said.

Though officers are trained to take out shooters before helping victims, it can take time to determine the threat.

To prevent further loss of lives, districts have safety procedure guidelines that disclose evacuation plans and actions for teachers to follow in case of an active threat.

“Generally during any security plan, you want to have a three way approach: rehearsal, appropriate response and recovery,” Bonitatibus said.

Bonitatibus acted as incident commander after a Feb. 4, 2015 school shooting in Frederick County, Maryland. As incident commander, Bonitatibus led police response after the shooting occurred.

“The incident only reinforced the importance of rehearsal and response amongst staff members since everyone knew what to do and where to go after years of repeated drills,” Bonitatibus said.

Teachers — who had rehearsed the scenario in the past — followed plans, securing all students and parents within safe classrooms immediately after shots were heard.

“We have to have drills every year for just that reason,” said Winnie Litten, a teacher and member of the Safety Committee at OPHS. “You want to hide but you want to be safe, too.”

Since serving on the Safety Committee, Litten has witnessed the growing concern from teachers towards how to react.

“Where people were asking what are the odds it’s going to happen here, I remember feeling anxious to plan,” Litten said, “but now you see [school shootings] happening more and more frequently; it’s definitely a part of the discussion of school safety and what to do.”

Incident commanders and first response teams, which include teachers and administrators at the school, execute safety procedures in an emergency. However, following procedure during an emergency can be a challenge.

“Every teacher becomes the incident commander of their own classroom … you have to do what’s best for your kids,” Assistant Principal Jason Meskis said.

Meskis currently serves as an incident commander for the district, and works alongside the local fire department and California Highway Patrol to practice emergency plans.

At a voluntary, district-wide training session Tuesday, March 22, the CHP advised faculty and staff to run, hide, and, if all else fails, fight.

“Don’t let yourself be a victim,” Meskis said. “Fight back if it’s the last resort.”

Teachers and faculty members across the district attended the training session.

“It made us realize the risk and what we are missing on preparation,” said Miguel Tabares, an OPHS maintenance staff member, “but it’s a great thing to know that everyone knows what to do in case of a scenario.”

In addition to offering the training, as well as distributing safety procedure handbooks to each school within the district, Oak Park Unified School District emphasizes personal connections between staff members and students to help minimize these possibilities.

“Our district philosophy is to have teachers, counselors and staff members in place to build positive relationships with students, in order for them to feel comfortable to speak with someone before [an incident] may ever occur,” OPUSD Superintendent Tony Knight wrote in an email.

With a population of only 1,500 students, Oak Park High School specifically relies on the increasing amount of campus supervisors and students to report strangers and inform administrators.

Similarly, the Las Virgenes Unified School District uses supervisors to help in a situation.

“The maintenance staff and groundskeepers are really the front line of defense. They are the most likely to see any suspicious activity,” Stepenosky said.

In the Simi Valley Unified School District, administrators are working in conjunction with the Simi Valley Police Department to organize their own formal, uniform training for all staff and students.

“Students and teachers need awareness and reinforcement of drills and action during a threat,” SVUSD Assistant Superintendent Hani Youssef said

Other school districts also rely on special devices, such as bar locks on classroom doors, to stop active shooters from entering classrooms. But these alone cannot stop a shooter.

“Ultimately, if someone wants to do harm, they will find a way to do it,” Bonitatibus said. “That’s why we put a lot of emphasis on rehearsal, how to respond and recovery.”