8
“As many people did, State Farm called and
offered to help in any way they could. We asked
them to make our announcements there because
so many of our parents are employed there. It’s
something to think about in communities that have a
large employer like that,” Brown said.
Communications inside Normal Community
High were limited for a variety of reasons, not the
least of which was security driven.
“We don’t make announcements in the school
during something like this because you don’t know if
someone is making an announcement under
duress, and our plan is not to have students just
evacuate if someone pulls a fire alarm,” Brown said.
During a school shooting years ago in Jonesboro,
Arkansas, the perpetrators pulled a fire alarm and
then shot students as they filed out of the school
building. Instead, the McLean County district’s
response plan is predicated on the use of codes.
Managing media relations equal parts
luck and planning
Probably the best move administrators made
with regard to keeping the media informed was to
schedule a 1 p.m. press conference at the district
office, a few miles away from the school and the
evacuation/reunification site. The press had
swarmed outside the reunification site in the first
few hours looking for students to interview.
“Having the press conference here kind of drew
everyone away from the reunification site. They
missed a lot of the dismissal of students from that
site,” Niehaus said. “The timing was a little luck and
a little planning.”
Niehaus said holding regular press briefings is a
must to combat the normal spread of rumors and
bad information, and also to make sure the media is
receiving information from a consistent school
source. He said the media covered the event in a
way that was responsible and also helped to get the
word out that no one had been injured – the most
important fact of the entire episode.
“Like I said, if someone had been injured, I don’t
know if people would have been so calm,” Niehaus
said.
Security issues revisited after incident
Administrators in the McLean County school
district have spent the months following the
shooting incident upgrading their emergency
response plans and also taking a new look at things
such as:
Keeping the school building entrances locked at
all times.
Having adults and perhaps even students wear
ID badges. The Normal Police Department after-
action recommendations included having school
district custodians, maintenance and delivery
personnel wear ID badges.
Both Normal Community and Normal West high
schools are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on most
school days, meaning that they are open longer
than security guards are available. Restricting
access to certain parts of the buildings now is in
place.
While the outside security of the district’s
buildings is pretty solid with locked access doors
and security cameras, administrators have been
rethinking security inside the buildings, including
adding thumb locks to doors that did not have
them and considering requiring students’
backpacks to be of the see-through mesh
variety.
(Continued from page 7)
“
Some of our schools did not want to do
drills that included students. I think it is a
major mistake not to include kids in the
drills…
The good news, of course, is that no one was
injured. We know that if there had been an injury the dynamics
of dealing with parents, students and the media that day might
have been completely different
”
- -
Dr. Gary C. Niehaus, superintendent of McLean County Unit District 5
Lessons
Learned
McLean story ——————————————————
