Prepared for the unthinkable
PAISD already has crisis management plan in place
BY DAN PARKER SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

Port Aransas schools are as prepared as any school can be for the unthinkable, Superintendent Billy Wiggins said recently after a wave of school shootings erupted across the nation.

Port Aransas High School held drills specifically geared toward dealing with an armed intruder on Tuesday, Sept. 25, and on Wednesday, Oct. 4, said Travis Longanecker, principal of the high school.

Longanecker said the drills were new for the district but coincidentally were planned before the recent school shootings. In the drills, a coded announcement was made over the high school intercom, and teachers then locked their classroom doors and turned off lights. Students got on the floor for safety. The school later was evacuated.

Longanecker said performance on the drill on Sept. 25 was not what he had hoped, but that everyone did much better on Oct. 4. He said he believes people began taking the drills more seriously after the spate of school shootings.

Spokesmen for H.G. Olsen Elementary School and Brundrett Middle School said the schools had not yet held intruder drills but will in the near future.

Sylvia Buttler, principal of the elementary school, said she is trying to put together a plan "with the best possibility to achieve the purpose of the drill but avoid upsetting the children."

Just this past summer, Port Aransas Independent School District employees finished putting together a crisis management plan for the Port Aransas Independent School District, Wiggins said. More than 50 pages long, it is a handbook that explains how employees should handle everything from armed intruders to big storms.

"It really is pretty inclusive of every possible situation and what each principal and teacher should do," Wiggins said. "And we're drilling on those scenarios. No one ever wants to deal with that kind of situation, but we're as prepared as we can be."

The crisis management manual includes offender profiles and how to spot warning signs that something bad could happen.

"We also have met with both the constable and the police department and made sure we would have all of the support from the area if we had (an intruder)," Wiggins said. "I think we have a pretty good plan."

Also this past summer, many exterior doors on school buildings have been locked from the inside to prevent uninvited folks from walking in without being seen by administrators at the schools' front offices. The doors still can be opened from the inside, but new fire alarms will go off when that happens. Main entrances are not locked or fitted with the alarms.

A recent one-week period saw three school shootings around the nation. In Bailey, Colo., an adult intruder killed a 16-year-old girl on Sept. 27. In Madison, Wis., a student shot a high school principal to death Sept. 29. In Pennsylvania, a man shot ten people, killing at least five children, on Monday, Oct. 3.

No school is completely immune to the possibility of an armed intruder appearing, Wiggins said.

"I think it's a possibility wherever you are," Wiggins said. "I think you just have to be prepared ... because the very last thing anyone would want to see is one of our kids get hurt."