School Safety Drills in Rutherford County

Sep 24, 2015 at 06:13 pm by bryan


Drills testing school safety were conducted by Rutherford County Sheriff's school resource officers in every Rutherford County School last week, SRO supervisors said.

SROs developed and conducted the drills, said SRO Lt. Brad Harrison who coordinated the drills with the SROs.

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At McFadden School of Excellence's drill, administrators and teachers quickly located a missing student. At Riverdale High School, students quickly sheltered in place during class change, then administrators tracked all students.

"These drills are designed to assess the reaction and response of each school, the school system and emergency responders to an active incident," Lt. Harrison said.

Each SRO will evaluate their school's response. They will send their evaluation to a committee of SROs for review. This committee will compile a list of strengths and areas for improvement. Once all of this is complete, the committee will then relay the findings to the SROs and the Rutherford County School System's Safe School Coordinator.

Rutherford County was the first county in Tennessee to implement the SRO program in 1993 and the first to place SROs in all county schools in 2013.

SRO Capt. Barry Hendrixson said SROs spend many hours preparing the drills, training faculty and students and conducting 180 school safety drills annually in Rutherford County Schools.

"They cover the emergency response guidelines for the school system and individual school matters," Capt. Hendrixson said. "There is also instruction given to students. None of this could be done without the unprecedented cooperation between the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office and the Rutherford County Schools. It displays the true dedication by both entities to keep the students of this county safer."

Lt. Harrison said the template of current emergency response plans were developed in 1998 after a small incident at one school. The SROs began evaluating the school system's emergency plans to respond primarily to fires and tornadoes.

"That year the SRO Division developed an all hazards approach. This means we developed a plan for almost any reasonable possibility we could think of," Lt. Harrison said. "The school system adopted it that year."

In 1999, the tragedy occurred at Columbine High School, leaving many school systems and law enforcement agencies scrambling to develop a more comprehensive safety plan for their schools.

"That is when our phones started ringing and other correspondence came in from all over the country," Lt. Harrison said. "Others saw we were ahead of the curve. Our leaders had enough forethought to develop and have plans in place prior to this incident."

Since then, other school systems asked for assistance from Rutherford County SROs and still do to this day. Rutherford County SROs have discussed, taught and advised school systems and other agencies about the process of developing safety plans from all across the United States. Sgt. Kerry Nelson and Sgt. Bill West have taught several classes internationally.

Capt. Hendrixson said once the extended plans were developed, Rutherford County Schools allowed the SROs to train administrators and teachers and hold drills.

"Lt. Harrison developed the plans we have used from the beginning and updates them each year as needed," Capt. Hendrixson said. "He also develops and coordinates the drills we use. There are tons of logistics that go into training, updating/evaluating responses and setting these drills up. I commend him for his dedication."

Capt. Hendrixson commend the dedication of the SROs for the work they put in on the drills at the individual schools He thanked school faculties and administrators for the improving the protection school students.

"This is a testament to the hard work, talent, far-sightedness and dedication the SRO Division provides for this county," Capt. Hendrixson said. "Again, no plan is perfect and you can't prepare for everything, but our officers make every attempt to make the schools safer."

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