School safety foundation educates Nebraska teachers about emergency response

PAPILLION, Neb. (WOWT) - No spring break for many educators in our area, they’re in the classroom learning or polishing up on the process to get their students back together with their parents after any incident or emergency that happens in school.

The I Love You Guys Foundation, working together with the Nebraska Department of Education, talked to educators, first responders and city officials about its standard reunification methods, getting students back to their parents and safely home after any school emergency.

“You got to get them all working on the same page,” said Jay Martin with the Nebraska Department of Education. “Standard response protocol comes into play and again that reunification method if we’re all talking the same language and having these same conversations and training, just like any type of practice just like football practice, music practice, the more you practice these things the better you’re going to be when the actual event happens.”

Metro educators spent part of their spring break getting training on reunification following school emergencies.

One participating is Papillion La Vista South High School.

“So it could be a gas leak, we could have a hazard of a tornado, we could have to evacuate our building because of our power going out or our HVAC system going down,” said Chris Zimmerman with the I Love You Guys Foundation.

Recent events involving false reporting of shootings in schools across the state, or swatting remind us all that school shootings can happen anywhere and we have to be prepared.

Omaha South High School was one of 10 schools across the state that had to deal with false reports of shootings recently. For first responders, those false reports are always real

“Luckily those were not tragic events, that it helps us to reevaluate and look at the things that we’re doing,” said Kevin Griger with the Sarpy County Sheriff’s Department.

More than two dozen public and private school districts across eastern Nebraska took part in Monday’s training.

I Love You Guys Foundation will also conduct its training exercises in Kearney and Gering.

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