SOLON — Disasters can impact a school at any time, whether it is a fire, tornado, derecho, or an active shooter. Regardless of the incident type, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) will be among the first to respond along with the Solon Fire Department, Johnson County Ambulance Service, and other fire departments and law enforcement agencies as needed. For the response to be efficient, with the goal to mitigate the hazard and save as many lives as possible, planning needs to occur well before something happens.
“We’ve always had great relationships with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department and they have a great presence in our buildings,” said Zach Wigle, High School Principal. “They’ve always had that. But following the tragic incident in Texas (the Uvalde school shooting), Sheriff Kunkel reached out to the district.” Wigle said the Sheriff talked about his deputies visiting all of the school buildings in the county, doing walk-throughs, and revisiting critical incident plans.
During the first week of August members of the JCSO and Johnson County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) met with the district’s administrative team. “We walked them through what we have in-place for our Critical Incident Plan. They listened and provided us with feedback.” Wigle noted by law the district must hold a certain number of fire drills and severe weather drills per semester. In addition, about five years ago the decision was made to also include a “critical incident” or “active intruder” drill each semester.
“It might not look the same as a fire drill, but we try to do it age-appropriate so we don’t bring a lot of angst or anxiety to the kids.” Much of the drill, he explained, involves talking through various scenarios and walking through some actions. Wigle added the conversation with JCSO and EMA also focused on evacuation points – designated areas for staff, teachers and students to gather away from the incident. “That is an area where we really learned a lot,” he said. “Once we get there (to the reunification site), now it becomes kind-of foreign to us. That’s where they filled in a lot of the details, and the role they will play, and the leads they will take in certain areas.” Following the meeting the administrative team and Buildings and Grounds Director Bryan Heinsius led the members of the Sheriff’s Office and EMA on a tour through the district’s buildings. Key points were to familiarize themselves with the layout, and “areas of concern” with feedback provided on ways to mitigate them. One of the members on the tour is a Solon parent and has since met with the faculty in each building to provide an overview of the meeting and answer any questions they had, particularly in the role the JCSO will play in responding to any incidents.
“Prior to Uvalde we’ve had a good long-standing relationship with all the schools (in Johnson County),” Sheriff Kunkel said noting his department is in a unique position. “We don’t just have one school district that we serve, like Iowa City, for example. We have Solon, Clear Creek Amana, Lone Tree, Hills Elementary, and Hillcrest Academy.” Kunkel said deputies are in the schools everyday already. “Our patrol deputies come in at some point (the times vary) during their shift when school is session to walk through and check in with staff for any concerns.” The deputies also routinely train for incidents at the schools. “So, we have that daily, proactive presence, we have training in-place if there were an incident, and when Uvalde happened I had one school reach out very quickly. I figured more schools would be coming, so we wanted to be proactive in touching base with our schools about what we do and how we can improve.”
In addition to better preparing the deputies, faculty, and staff, the Sheriff said it also would reassure the parents that both the schools and the Sheriff’s Office are ready if something were to happen.
“We reached out to all of our districts and said we’d like to come in, meet with your staff, take a look at your security protocols, walk through the schools, and also to make sure everybody’s on the same page. What is important for us (as law enforcement officers responding to an incident) is consistency among the schools.” Schools doing things differently would be like three towns having three different ordinances regarding barking dogs, and the deputies responding to a complaint having to take into account which ordinance applies. “It makes our job a little more difficult if there’s not consistency.”
Sheriff Kunkel added Lieutenants from the Patrol and Investigations divisions, and a Sergeant from Investigations have been spearheading the effort. “If something were to happen, there’s two major parts to the approach: the initial response (Patrol Division), and then the investigation afterward.”
Meeting with the faculty and staff is vital, the Sheriff said. “We need to make sure that they see through their lens is communicated to us, because the approach we take may be foreign or different to how they understand why we’re doing this.”
One item in particular, the reunification process, is of particular focus. “That’s another major component of any incident at a school whether its an intruder situation or severe weather. It creates panic for parents and justifiably so.” Kunkel said there needs to be a plan in place for getting the kids reunited with their family while controlling the chaos. “We don’t want to run into more problems because of the emotional flood of responses from the community,” he added. “Its just trying to manage, as best we can, the outcomes after an incident.”
During the Uvalde incident parents begged officers to enter the building, begged to be allowed to go in and get their kids themselves, and some even volunteered (with their own firearms) to go in and take out the shooter. “Speaking as a parent with kids in the (Solon) district too, any parent would want to rush in and save their child. That’s completely understandable. And the hard part on our side is managing the chaos from that response and managing whatever chaos may be going on inside that building. And that requires a massive amount of people, a massive amount of manpower to control the scene and to make sure its orderly and safe for everybody.”
Kunkle said the biggest concerns have come more from the communities (to the school districts) as people have wondered if their schools are working to keep their kids safe, if plans are in place, and to have the confidence that if something happens the staff is trained to handle it. “We didn’t get any of those inquiries, everybody was going to the schools. We’re in the schools every day, so I wanted to make sure we’re being a good partner for them.”
Included in the partnership has been ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate) training for all of Solon’s administrators and approximately 70% of the staff. Wigle pointed out several new staff members have come onboard over the past two-to-three years. “We still have newer staff who have not been through the training, but that is something that as we generate scenarios and talk through them, and walk through them as a district staff, and during the school year with our students; we use all of those ALICE training tips and procedures.” Wigle added there has been continual review and ongoing training since the initial training six year ago.
The ALICE program has been taught in all 50 states to over 1-million individuals representing nearly 6,500 schools, 1,425 healthcare facilities, 5,100 law enforcement agencies, 755 houses of worship, and 3,055 businesses as well as 893 governmental entities. The JCSO has certified ALICE instructors on staff and Kunkle said his office has been conducting training sessions for several years. Those instructors are also playing key roles in working with the schools, the Sheriff added.
In addition to JCSO staff providing training for the schools, the Solon district has also opened their doors to the deputies for their own training during the summer when school is not in-session. It’s a benefit for both, Wigle said, as it gives the deputies more opportunities to learn the layouts of the buildings. Providing opportunities, especially for the day shift deputies, to build that knowledge has been emphasized Kunkel said. “If something were to happen, most likely it would be that group of our staff who would be responding. On a typical daily walk-through, they’re probably not walking through the food service areas, or the locker rooms. So, the walk-through’s we’re wanting now are looking at all of those entry access points and controlled access so they have a good idea of the layout, and what locks are supposed to be locked, what doors are exit-only,” he said.
To further strengthen the partnership and enhance safety, the district is purchasing radios which will have the capability of providing direct communication with the Sheriff’s Office through the County’s Joint Emergency Communications Center (JECC, or “J-Com”). Also, Wigle said, the district’s security cameras have the ability to be accessed by the Sheriff’s Office with a live feed direct to the deputies on the scene. The district also has improved it’s ability to communicate with the parents and guardians, he added, and also providing a messaging component to the Sheriff’s Office.
Currently the district uses Apptegy as the primary public announcement system for personalized phone, text messages, and/or email messages to parents, staff, and others. The system also allows school administrators to record a short message, which can be delivered to an extensive or selective list of recipients, and can be used for calls regarding school closings, emergencies, and weather delays in addition to more routine general announcements and notifications.
“In the case of a critical incident, getting communication out is going to be vital and they (JCSO) can really take the lead and help us with that,” Wigle said. “Its expanding that partnership, and that’s what will be different moving forward.”
Kunkel explained the radios are a result of legislation which now requires some 1,500 school buildings across the state to have at least one radio capable of connecting with the local public safety dispatch center. “That way, if something were to happen, you have that single stream of contact,” said Kunkel. “The only question the schools have is, which one are you going to buy? Preferably they have the same radios we do so everybody is on the same system with a designated frequency. There’s straight radio communication between school staff, dispatch, or law enforcement.”
A profound breakdown in communications was one fault cited in the Uvalde incident and Kunkel called the legislature’s action a response to a lesson learned from the tragedy. It should be noted most law enforcement radio traffic is encrypted or otherwise inaccessible to the casual scanner radio listener.
The bottom line for the parents and guardians, Wigle said, is the district has staff trained to deal with critical incidents. “We train, we drill proactively every year just like we do for severe weather or fire. We have an ongoing communication and great relationship with the Sheriff’s Department, that have a strong presence in our schools throughout the entire school year. As we’ve remodeled or built new buildings we kept safety in mind with entrances and cameras.”
“We train frequently, and we’re in the schools every day,” Kunkel added. “I am confident we are well-prepared for anything. We also take any threats involving the schools very seriously and we have a very thorough, streamlined approach to how we handle threats.” Those threats may come from an incident at school, a social media post, and often both, he explained. “We have a system in place that works very well for how we investigate those. I would say we take a very aggressive approach to vetting school threats.”
Most investigations are triggered by something seen on social media, said Kunkel. “We appreciate those reports because sometimes, as we’ve seen across the country, the red flags are scattered, people don’t really connect the dots, or they just didn’t get reported. But again, we take them very seriously.” Sometimes the reports come anonymously, sometimes from school staff, and sometimes from a comment overheard. “Even an off-the-cuff comment, we will investigate aggressively because we want to make sure. Is this something that’s credible? Or is it people making bad decisions with their choice of words? And the thing is, you have to take them all seriously, every time.”
When it comes to an apparent threatening comment, Kunkel wants people to err on the side of caution and take it seriously. “We need people to report those things when they see them, even if they’re not sure how to take them or they don’t understand the context. Let us know anyway and we can look into them. We’d rather know about it and have a detective investigate it (and have it turn out to be merely a poor choice of words or a bad joke) than ignoring it, leaving it alone, and then we find out later the signs were there and nobody said anything.”
While it is virtually impossible to plan for and protect against every potential threat and hazard, Kunkel has a positive outlook.
“I’m confident what we’re doing is on the right track. The vast majority of the staff at the Sheriff’s Office who have kids, their kids are going to the schools that we serve so we have a personal investment too in making sure that not only our kids, but everybody’s kids, feel safe when they go to school,” said Kunkel. “When they go to school, they know they’re in a safe environment and they trust that we’re up to the task if something happens.”
Deputy Mark Moses and Sheriff Brad Kunkel talk outside the Solon High School. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office is expanding its partnership with all of the school districts in the county to improve safety and response to critical incidents. For Moses and Kunkel, school safety is personal. Moses is a 1999 Solon grad while Kunkel is a Solon resident. Many of the staff have kids in schools served by the Sheriff’s Office as well.