First State schools experience safety training in case of an emergency

GEORGETOWN, Del.- Parent John-Michael Keyes is no stranger to how chaotic and tense the aftermath of a shooting can be. He lost his daughter in a Colorado school shooting, and following that incident he wanted to find ways to help schools who may experience something like this.

“It really was in 2009 when we saw a void in crisis response and that is in common language in communicating what the crisis is and how to respond to it,” Keyes said.

He started the “I Love U Guys Foundation” where he developed a standard response protocol giving schools steps on how they can get through crisis events such as tornadoes, fires, and acts of violence.

“So, who better than to bring them in here and train people in our school districts and charter schools to take this back and to spin up their own district,” Douglas Scheer, with Delaware Emergency Management Agency’s Comprehensive School Safety Program, said.

A part of all of this, is teaching these places how to get students to their parents after the incident has happened, especially since that reunification process can be hectic and filled with emotions.

“It’s important that we bring students together with accountability, in the case of active violence we may need to include psychological first aid and it’s complicated enough that we don’t want to invent it on the spot,” Keyes said.

And, that reunification exercise was shown Friday in Georgetown to different groups including school officials, first responders, and mental health professionals.

“We break the group into three teams, students, parents and the reunification team,” Keyes said. “What we don’t do is simulate and act that created the cause for the reunification, today is all about learning the method.”

Leaders of the event told us while this training gave attendees hands-on experience it’s also filling a gap.

“Our school safety plan has roughly has 75 annexes and there’s one very short section in there on how to do reunification,” Scheer said. “It was just a matter of setting up tables, they’re going to come in, everybody’s going to work out fine, and that’s just not the reality to it there’s a lot of emotion, there’s a lot of anxiety attached to that.”

“They need to know that we are all in this together in the benefit of the families and the students,” Scheer said.

DEMA’s School Safety Program was able to hold these trainings in each Delaware county to help promote statewide adoption of the Standard Reunification Method.