By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The state fire marshal’s office has increased the number of crisis drills schools will be required to conduct.
The requirements now include four fire drills, three tornado drills and nine crisis drills.
Superintendent John Thissen told the Hays USD 489 school board Monday night the number of drills has not changed much, but the state is now requiring more crisis drills.
Not all of the drills will be the same or be centered on an intruder scenario.
Thissen gave a couple of examples. A scenario could be based on a semi tanker in the area having an ammonia leak or a school being on lock down due to the law enforcement searching for an escaped prisoner, he said.
The fire marshal’s guidelines stipulate the public can only be notified five minutes before a drill. The concern was raised that someone might take advantage of a drill to harm students or staff.
This means the Hays school district will have to alter its notification policy. The current Hays policy intended to let the public know more advance of drills so no one would be alarmed when they saw students evacuating a school during a drill.
“Hopefully, it will spread fast enough there will not be that fear that will spread out there on the media that something bad is happening at one of the schools at this time,” Thissen said. “That is why we want to have that notice even if it is just a few minutes ahead of time.”
The Hays public and private schools cooperated with local law enforcement to develop joint crisis plans for schools in the community. A crisis committee, composed of these partners, meets four to five times a year to review the crisis plan.
Assistant Superintendent Shanna Dinkel said the drills will be reviewed by administration regularly to see how the schools’ responses can be improved.
Thissen said the crisis plan is something that will be constantly evolving.
“So we’re learning,” he said. “We are trying to do our best and learn how to end up doing it as well as we can.”
Board member Mike Walker asked if the crisis committee could give a report to the board this school year, and Thissen said he would make sure that happened.