RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Fire, tornado, and active shooter drills are not uncommon during the school year. However, when it comes to a reunification drill, well, it’s a sign of the times.
Inside the halls of Rockvale High School, Rutherford County faculty are taking on the roles of students and parents in an event of reunification.
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“It’s important to actually do it, it’s one thing to look at it on paper it’s another to actually walk the walk,” said John Michael Keyes, Executive Director of the ‘I Love U Guys’ Foundation.
Keyes leads the training through his non-profit foundation. It was created after an armed man took seven girls hostage at a school in Bailey, Colorado in 2006.
“My daughter was one of those students and the stranger ultimately shot and killed Emily,” said Keyes.
The foundation was created in her memory.
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“When a school goes into lockdown, the kids are automatically traumatized, it is parents’ worst nightmare,” said Patty Oeser, School Safety Director for Rutherford County Schools.
Oeser said the training was planned prior to the Covenant School shooting. “When it happened, I turned on the news and I was watching everything, and I got a little nervous about their process and how long it was taking these students and their parents to be reunified.”
To speed up the process, Rutherford County uses the Raptor app. “If we go into a lockdown [the app] will automatically call law enforcement,” Oeser said.
Oeser said it’s also much quicker for teachers to notify the school district what students are in the classroom.
“What will happen is the teacher’s roster will pull up on here and she can account for her and her students and then you submit and everyone is accounted for,” Oeser explained.
According to Oeser, the drill will also be the model for other emergency situations, such as gas leaks.
The school district will also no longer use common language like code red and code yellow because it has become confusing for students. Instead, they will use words such as lockdown, shelter, and evacuate to alert staff and students of an emergency.
