In this episode, we explore our schools' safety and security measures, concentrating on the Standard Response Protocols (SRP) that have been successfully implemented for many years. Scott Thran, our district’s Safety and Security Coordinator, explains these protocols, equipping our families and community with essential knowledge. Additionally, the superintendent and the communications director enhance the discussion with real-life examples from our schools, offering insights into the significance and effectiveness of these safety measures.
LOSD Safety and Security Information
Dr. Jennifer Schiele, Superintendent, LOSD
Mary Kay Larson, Executive Director of Communications, LOSD
Scott Thran, Safety and Security Coordinator, LOSD
MICHELLE ODELL:: [00:00:00] Welcome to Learning in Lake Oswego, a podcast providing educational insights for an engaged community. Lake Oswego School District Superintendent, Dr. Jennifer Schiele discuss what's important to our learning community. She'll be joined by experts examining various topics, answering important questions, and sharing upcoming events and activities you won't want to miss.
And now, it's your host.
MARY KAY LARSON:: Welcome to Learning in Lake Oswego. I'm Mary Kay Larson here with our Superintendent, Dr. Jennifer Shealy. Today we're discussing a crucial topic. School safety and security measures, particularly focusing on our standard response protocols that have been in place for years. Scott Thran, our district safety and security coordinator, is here with us to shed light on these protocols and help explain them.
Our goal with this podcast [00:01:00] is to equip our families and community with the knowledge they need to understand these essential practices. I do know we just surveyed our newest families to the district and asked them if they knew what we did in the case of a safety and security incident, and they said no.
So we thought, what better way to explain it than to host this podcast. So with that, Jen, I'll turn it over to you.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Great. Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's show on SRP. Mary Kay and I have found ourselves, unfortunately, having to resort to our standard response protocols more frequently than I'd prefer.
Fortunately, each instance has been a non emergency, but it's crucial to treat them all with the highest level of seriousness, even if our staff, students, and Families and the water community are unaware of the outcome. While undoubtedly frightening, our readiness is essential for effectively managing these situations.
So Scott, it's great to have you here with us today. Can you start by sharing your [00:02:00] background and what led you to join Lake Oswego School District?
SCOTT THRAN:: Well, thanks, Jen. It's great to be here. And yeah, my background is that I was with the Lake Oswego Police Department for 26 years before retiring in 2020. And I've been with the school district just this year and excited and ready to be involved and Improve everything related to SRP and the district.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah, we're very lucky to have Scott join us this year Especially as a very experienced police officer. So Furthermore as Marikea So with that said, we're kind of eager to talk about this standard response protocol that our schools have adopted. Can you give us the overview of SRP? And just for those listening, I sometimes say SRP, sometimes I say standard response protocol.
It's the exact same thing. So Scott, can you give us an overview of the SRP and its critical role in safeguarding our students and our staff?
SCOTT THRAN:: Sure. The standard response protocol is a program. for crisis response and post crisis reunification. [00:03:00] And SRP comes from the I Love You Guys Foundation. And I think it's important to note that it's a program that's used worldwide.
And I think that they estimate that it's used in over 50, 000 school districts, departments, agencies, organizations, and communities around the world. And it's also very critical to know that It's a program that was created through research based practices of school administrators, psychologists, public safety experts, families, and first responders.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: How does the SRP foster a unified approach and flexible response across kind of various situations?
SCOTT THRAN:: Well, SRP provides a uniformed, planned, and practiced response to any incident. And it uses standardized vocabulary, so all stakeholders can understand it. can be on the same page in understanding the response and status of an event.
It's simple, and there are only five specific actions to be used during an event, and they are [00:04:00] hold, secure, lockdown, evacuate, and shelter. They're simple, but it also allows for great flexibility in the programs.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Which is so, you know, very important based on the situation happening. Can you go ahead a little further and explain the actions under hold?
within the SRP and their contribution to safety.
SCOTT THRAN:: Absolutely. Hold is the protocol used when hallways need to be clear of occupants. Hold is followed by a directive, in your room or your area. So it would sound like hold in your room or area. It might be the gym or you know, other area of a building. And it could be used for things like allowing for staff to clean up a big spill in a hallway.
or to deal with someone experiencing like a medical event, and it just prevents, you know, further chaos, I guess, in a hallway with students pulling around, and it just kind of simplifies events so they can be dealt with quicker.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Got it. So adults and staff then are [00:05:00] trained to close and lock the door and account for all students and adults and just kind of do business as usual.
Is that what you would say?
SCOTT THRAN:: Yeah, and hold is really just more precautionary, right? So it's just business as usual, just stay in your area. While the situation is being dealt with and usually it's not, in most circumstances, it's not a critical incident, but it's more of just for the ease of dealing with that specific event.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Okay, the next symbol that we use is secure. Can you talk a little bit about secure and what that does?
SCOTT THRAN:: Secure is a protocol used to safeguard people within the building from potential threats from outside. So depending on the circumstances, it's typically business as usual inside and we're, and where people are just prevented from entering or leaving the building in a, so it's more of a controlled environment.
And we would use secure, a simple example of would be, an aggressive dog would be spotted on a school campus. We would go into a secure protocol just to prevent [00:06:00] staff and students from being exposed to the arrest of dog.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Got it. No, that makes good sense. And then the next one is lockdown. Maybe explain lockdown a little bit for us.
SCOTT THRAN:: So lockdown is a protocol used for a potential threat that has already entered a building. So basically, Of the protocols, it can be the most serious, but typically we use it mostly as a preventative measure, and that could be, you know, a simple example might be a disgruntled person in the school office that is, you know, making threats or is potentially seen as a threat.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: So, during a lockdown, what essential
SCOTT THRAN:: So when a lockdown is commenced, it's followed by a directive typically an announcement of locks, lights out of sight. So again, the announcement would be locked down, locks, lights out of sight. This calls for direct action of people inside the building. And it means that, you Those people inside the building will get behind a locked door, turn off the room lights, and remain out [00:07:00] of sight.
So, remaining behind a locked door is the number one way to reduce the threat of harm in a true active threat incident.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah, and I would say that lockdown, I mean, this is the scary one, right? I mean, this is the one that we hear on the news, or this is the one that, I think keeps us up at night. So when you think about a shooting happening in the school or somebody who leaves a threat, we have had lockdowns in Lake Oswego.
One of them I can think of right now would be last year. We had somebody who left a threatening note in a bathroom. And since we didn't know whether or not that was a credible threat at the time, we automatically locked down everyone. Would you say that's. A good example of something or a time when we would use lockdown.
SCOTT THRAN:: And that's a great example. And it's a good reminder that most of the time when we do the lockdown events and we drill for them, it's because they can be serious, but most of the time it's preventative and it's It's really done with just an extra regard for safety.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Absolutely. And I think during these scary situations We're doing [00:08:00] a lot of communicating with families and community outside of the district So Mary Kay, maybe you could answer this one as i'm sure our listeners are wondering How do we as a district communicate with parents during these type of events particularly in situations where it poses a greater risk?
Or we know it's going to be a long prolonged time. Sure
MARY KAY LARSON:: Yeah, we use our established communication channels for our families as well as our residents and The moment an SRP is put into place a team is mobilized which includes the superintendent and myself and we begin communicating out to all Our families and students and residents with the facts that we have at the time and our commitment to our community is to communicate out about every 15 to 20 minutes because studies show that the more people know that we're communicating with them, the calmer they can be and the more that they can understand and be [00:09:00] helpful in the situation.
So, for example, the moment a SRP is put into place, parents would receive a a text, a voice message, and an email, and depending on the extent of it and the number of schools impacted, it might also be on the website and out into the community. I also will note that we work very closely with our Lake Oswego Police Department.
I partner with the Public Information Officer with the LOPD, and we do as best we can to coordinate our communications so that we're as clear as possible. I will also say that There are times where people want us to say more than we can confirm at the time, so our communication comes out with what we can confirm at that moment, but then we keep communicating until we know we're through the, the incident or the drill.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah, and I think one thing that's really important is we always try to give a timeline, so when we give a communication, we say, you'll get the next update in five minutes. And that way we set a [00:10:00] timer and we make sure that we communicate with people on that timeline. So Mary Kate does an amazing job making sure that we're giving people all the information that we can, especially accurate information.
MARY KAY LARSON:: I do want to add just from an anecdotal, the effectiveness of that. We had an incident at one of our elementary schools where we had to evacuate. And I know we're going to talk about that in a minute. But we were working actually in the same office as the LOPD at a makeshift command center and we were able to communicate out frequently.
And what we heard from our 911 operators is, I think they only got two calls in from the community, which is unprecedented. And they really credit it for that. with the constant communication from our district. So sometimes people will say, why do I need to know this? My kid's not at that school, but there's a reason for it.
And it's, it's better to keep people calm and informed. Then I know sometimes it can feel a little alarming, but there's a reason for it. And it's [00:11:00] important.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah. And that also. Freeze up dispatch to deal with other emergencies around the community. So it's important to not bog them down with the same kind of questions and calls.
And so you just brought up evacuate. So that's the next protocol here. So nice transition there. Scott, can you talk to us about evacuation and when do we use that?
SCOTT THRAN:: So evacuation protocol is used anytime. There's the potential that it's less safe to remain in the building. Then evacuating. So it is a example.
I think most people would relate to is a fire or smoke in a building
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: great And then so adults and staff when we evacuate we bring roll sheets. We bring any go bags that may have medication or food in them lead we have to lead students to an evacuation location and then we account for all students and adults and then if There are any injuries or problems we use We have a red and green card method where we can hold up a card and make sure the administrator knows I need help or I have all my students with me [00:12:00] and I'm, I don't need any help.
So that's kind of how we work through evacuation. And the last one of the five is shelter. Can you walk us through Shelter, please?
SCOTT THRAN:: Yeah. Shelter is used during potential hazard and or typically invo includes a safety strategy. So the most appropriate example for our region is an earthquake. So people would shelter in place and then be given an announcement to drop, cover and hold during a shelter.
And we practice those, we practice specifically earthquake events a couple of times a year for that reason.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Now, if we go back to secure and lockdown, in both of those situations, what should parents understand about approaching the school or collecting their children? Because, you know, my child's got a dentist appointment at 10 30 and I'm supposed to be collecting them, but the school is in either secure or lockdown.
What guidance can you offer parents so that they're Which is, is normally an instinct for a parent to rush the school during any kind of emergency. What kind of guidance [00:13:00] can you give them about that during the lockdown or secure?
SCOTT THRAN:: So actually for both, I mean, the guidance would be don't come to the school in, in general.
And again, with SRP, it does allow for some flexibility. So with secure specifically, we're going to not allow, people in or out of the building generally. Again, there's always an exception. And so, depending on the circumstances, we have flexibility and the building administrator can use their best discretion in circumstances where it's even more critical that a parent come pick up their child versus a homeowner.
a slim chance of risk, you know on a on the back corner of a school property, for example. So again, it does allow for discretion, but generally we're going to the guidance is please do not come to the school because it typically creates more issues than it alleviates.
MARY KAY LARSON:: I think it's important to note that while I know I'm my [00:14:00] child's parent and the principal knows that I'm my child's parent.
The police officers and other people there to respond to the incident don't know, and they may be looking for an unknown person. And so it's really important to stay clear of the school just to let the responders do their job and just stay clear so that they can focus on the safety of the students and then quickly get back to school as usual.
But that's one of the reasons why it's important to stay away.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Great
MARY KAY LARSON:: point.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: So balancing realistic drill experiences with the emotional well being of students and staff is crucial. And this is something we hear a lot from families. They believe that drilling will cause more anxiety to a child. And so we're always trying to balance that so that we can prepare our students and staff.
Like how, how can we achieve this?
SCOTT THRAN:: I think drill experiences are important and, and practice drills have proven to lessen various impacts in real events. So we do try to encourage full participation in [00:15:00] drills with the understanding that there is a real need for flexibility in this area as well. So I think the emotional well being of students and staff is critical and, and taken into consideration.
So this means that we use a team approach in determining a full, you know, a full drill participation is necessary or not, and whether or not it's appropriate for some students or staff to participate. The key point to that is that. We get input from administrators and staff and that's critical in making those determinations
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Because this is the next thought in everyone's mind, is like, how do these protocols adjust for different age groups from our elementary school to our middle school and then our high school?
SCOTT THRAN:: In the basics of SRP, you know, the terms and the actions are the same, where things differ is how we provide that age appropriate training material. So generally, the younger the students, the more basic the concepts. With our youngest students, we usually talk in terms of being safe and demonstrating actions that keep us safe.[00:16:00]
And as our students age and mature, more specific discussion and actions that can be had about minimizing risk and reducing exposure to threats, and those discussions can be appropriate. Based on the, you know, the age, I think it's important that knowing that we follow the SRP of the I love you guys foundation, and they provide great resources and training material, especially for older students.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah, one thing that I love you guys foundation does, and I've I've listened to numerous times their speakers and their professional development on safety for students is about the reunification process of when there is an incident at a school, how do we reunify children with their families during this very traumatic event.
SCOTT THRAN:: The biggest piece is the communication, you know, with, and we use those same tools that we use to communicate generally to announce reunification. And it's critical that we. [00:17:00] Keep up with current contact information so that you're providing current contact information. And I know Mary Kay will 100 percent agree with that.
That's the most critical piece. And past experience show us that when we have hiccups with notifications and reunification, many are based on just not being able to contact parent because they haven't updated.
MARY KAY LARSON:: I'm glad you said that, Scott, because every spring we ask families to verify their information in our database.
And one of the key pieces is your child's emergency contacts. And I know sometimes there's some confusion on what contact. What does that person do exactly? And most often it's if a parent can't be reached, it needs to be somebody who the school can contact to come pick up a child. So it is somebody locally that you trust can pick up your child and care for them until you can pick them up.
connect with them as a parent. It's a really important piece. And when people [00:18:00] register initially, those contacts are current, but as they age, it's important to go in every year and update those emergency contacts.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Absolutely. And what happens in those kinds of situations is you do get a lot of communication.
It's going to tell you exactly where, what time and how to pick up your child. A lot of times it involves you bringing your ID. So you'll have to have a driver's license again. Your principal, your teacher knows who you are and who you're connected to, but there's a lot of people involved in a reunification and those other people will not and they won't be able to let your child go with someone that they don't know who it is.
So it's important things like that, like make sure that's updated, make sure you follow the directions on the communications from the school district on how and when to do that. to pick up your child so that we can safely reunite them. And we trained for this. Actually, last year we did have a reunification drill at one of our schools, and we took all the students to an unknown place and then communicated with all the families, and they came to pick them all up with their IDs.
You have to fill out a form, and then we [00:19:00] reunified them one at a time. And it takes a long time. So you have to be very patient, but that's how we get all the students safely back in their homes.
MARY KAY LARSON:: So I really appreciate that. I'm glad you brought that up too, because I think it's important to point out that Scott, you are safety and security coordinator for the district, but you work with a team of people who have not only their day jobs, their regular jobs, but they also are part of a team that gets pulled together in incidents.
I don't know if you want to talk about them at all and what their roles are.
SCOTT THRAN:: Yeah, we have a reunification team and there are multiple roles and, and really the idea is to just expedite and have an orderly reunification process. So we just divide up responsibilities and the team in combination with school staff will man different tables and man different areas and have specific responsibilities as far as the reunification process goes.
And I can add that again, that I love you guys foundation, their website. It [00:20:00] actually has a parent video that explains reunification on their website and that's again a great resource if parents want to educate themselves beyond, you know, what's offered on the school district website as well.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: That's a great idea because I Love You Guys does have a fantastic website.
You can see the to go kits on that website and I can assure you that we have those in every school. And they're on wheels, and if we need to go, we go, and it has all the materials we need for a successful evacuate and a reunification in them. So, it's, it's a fantastic organization that really sets schools up for success.
So finally, Scott, what steps can families take at home? Our families are always so willing to help any way they can. So what can they do from home to complement these safety protocols and discussions that happen in our schools?
SCOTT THRAN:: You know, just having those discussions, with your kids about drills and and and don't keep it even specific to school drills.
Practice emergency drills on your own, around your own home [00:21:00] and being out in public. And the one of the great things about SRP is it's not universal to schools. It covers all areas. Being in public places and other buildings. And again, it's just, it's a universal system that can be used anywhere. Being familiar with that is just a plus.
And the more you're familiar with it, and the more that you talk with your kids about it, the more everyone is comfortable with drills in those situations. And hopefully the goal is to make, you know, any real event less chaotic and just to make it more seamless when we do have to do with what might be an emergency.
MARY KAY LARSON:: A lot of times I think we as adults think well, it's logical, I know what I would do in this incident but it's true what they say when there is a stressful thing happening you have a physiological response and your ability to reason and see clearly really diminishes and so it's important that you have already prethought what you would do and, and practice so that [00:22:00] it's a little bit more second nature in those moments.
That's why it's also important to have that conversation with your family and practiced it so that you don't have to be thinking on the spot. You've already thought it through before an incident has happened.
SCOTT THRAN:: Yeah, I like to often relate it to, you know, other experiences. We take driver education because it makes us better drivers, you know, and it's the same with standard response protocol.
We practice that not only because it's the law, but it helps us to react when the event is real and process it better and have it be less chaotic.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah, so all families tonight should be talking about these five words at their dinner table, hold, secure, and secure. Lockdown, evacuate, and shelter because the more kids hear those words the less it's scary and they know what to do with them.
So Scott, thank you so much for being here with us today to discuss this very important safety topic. We really appreciate your guidance and expertise when it comes to student safety. We're very lucky to have you.
SCOTT THRAN:: Well, thank you so much. [00:23:00]
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yeah. Thank you,
MARY KAY LARSON:: Scott. And thank you to all of our families and residents and students who've tuned in to listen to this very important episode of our podcast.
Safety and security are a shared responsibility between our schools and our families and our community. And the more we know, the better we'll be. And as we've mentioned a couple of times, there's lots of information on our website and also the I love you guys website, which we'll have linked to this podcast as well as you can find it on our district site.
So we're going to switch gears here to a lighter note. Let's find out where Jen is going to be this May.
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: Yes, thank you, Mary Kay. And as I've said in the past, something is happening in our schools every day through the end of the year. So I'm just going to highlight a few events. The first one is the reimagined River Grove Elementary School is nearly complete.
And to celebrate, we're hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony on May 6th. Before inviting the hundred plus volunteers on our school [00:24:00] board advisory committees to the school for the spring district wide advisory committee meeting. So this will be the first time that many of our committee members can come in and see that new beautiful school.
Thank you again for passing our bonds. We're also hosting our Lake Oswego High School Garden Dedication Ceremony on May 14th to honor former superintendent Dr. Korech. Bill served as our superintendent in our district for over two decades. He remains very active in our community and he's an avid gardener and we really wanted to thank him for everything he has done by dedicating this time.
And then before I forget, I am buying my tickets for the 40th Annual Lobster Feed, a joint fundraiser by the Lake Oswego Rotary and Lakewood Center for the Arts. This event has raised over 4. 2 million dollars to benefit non profit organizations, community projects, the arts, and humanitarian needs in the Lake Oswego community, Oregon, and the entire world.
So please buy your tickets for [00:25:00] this. You will definitely see me there. For
MARY KAY LARSON:: Yeah, it's a great community event. I think it brings out 200, 300 people every June. It's also a great way to kick off summer, kind of signals that sun and summer are coming soon. And we all love that. Yep. So this concludes today's episode of Learning in Lake Oswego.
Next time we'll pivot to high school athletics, and we might even have an opportunity to chat with a future Olympian in our student body. So looking
JENNIFER SCHIELE:: forward to that. Thank you, and until next time, keep exploring and stay engaged. Class dismissed.
MICHELLE ODELL:: We hope you found this episode informative and helpful.
While our discussions are general, we understand each family's experience is unique. If you have specific questions about your child, please contact your school principal. To learn more about the topics we discussed, visit us at www.losd.org . Ask a question or share ideas for future episodes, please [00:26:00] visit LOSDSchools.
org. And remember to like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for engaging with Learning in Lake Oswego. We appreciate your support and look forward to having you with us for our next episode.