BILLINGS — Both the Billings Public Schools and Billings Police Department held separate safety trainings at West High on Wednesday to focus on safety in schools.
For the first time, the district held a reunification drill, meaning that in case an emergency was to happen at a school, students would be transported by bus to a secondary location, and parents would then be notified on how to pick up their kids from there.
“There's going to be a lot of people who are highly concerned and highly emotional when it comes to being reunified with their students,” said Joe Halligan, the school safety and emergency management coordinator, who helped organize the event.
In the event of a real emergency, parents would receive an alert on an app called ParentSquare, which will let them know when students have been evacuated and what location to pick them up from.
“I tell people all the time, hope is not a strategy, and so we can't just sit back and hope that nothing happens and not be prepared,” said Halligan. "We're doing everything we can to plan and prepare and run exercises and drills and practices so that when it happens, we'll be ready to hit the ground running."
The purpose of reunification is to clear an area as quickly as possible once it becomes a crime scene and get students to safety.
“We will have to evacuate kids out of that area in an effort to allow law enforcement and first responders to do their jobs," said Halligan.
Thirty-seven students and their parents came to the high school to participate, along with other district faculty. Jamie Westfall was one of the parent volunteers who brought her kids to participate in Wednesday’s drill and felt more secure with how the school is handling safety.
“The more prepared that I am as a parent understand the process and that they do have a plan in place, and my kids understand, it's like wearing a seat belt, right? You do it. You don't do it because you think you're going to get in a wreck. You do it just in case,” said Westfall. "I think it's important that we practice these things mostly for the kids, honestly, not even just the administrators that are going through the task."
Her kids, who attend Castle Rock Middle School and Skyview High School, were also glad that they attended and that what only took up a small part of their day made a big impact.
“It wasn't that difficult. It was just an easy process," said Cooper Westfall. "It made me feel a lot safer."
“It definitely feels a lot better knowing that it was this organized that we all just got up and went that quick,” said Gus Westfall.
Meanwhile, across the parking lot, the police department was holding its rescue task force training that will last through Friday. The purpose of the training is to simulate live emergencies and learn how to handle the protocol in those situations. These types of training happen every three to five years and also assist the school district on what to do if a danger, like a shooting, were to happen.
“We see across the country a lot of the active shooter events at the schools, so that's how we partnered with School District Two as well so that we can kind of bring a full circle training to this,” said Sgt. Jeff Stovall, the department's public relations sergeant.
Stovall says not to panic if you hear noises or elevated police presence at the school; it is all a part of their emergency response training.
“We're going to ask everyone to stay out of the area. We've got crime scene tape up to keep people outside, but what we're doing is we're making it as real life of training, and we don't want any outside interference in that so that we can give our officers the best training that we were able to offer them,” said Stovall.
All of these efforts are to keep you and the community safe and prepared for any incident.
"I feel like the communication overall has helped improve just the overall sense of security, knowing what's happening at the school, knowing what's upcoming at the school, even the access to the teachers and people in the administration office. It's very accessible here and the communication line is very open across the board. I think it's been great," said Westfall.
