Table Top Follow Up

By: Rich Yelenich, Washington - Retired

Ask any educator to prioritize the most essential elements of a student's day at school and they will most likely place safety at the top of the list. Going back to Maslow's Theory, if you don't feel safe then you won't be able to attend to or achieve the other things which lead to success in life.

Educators do a very good-to-excellent job of making sure students, staff and community members are safe while on our campuses during the school day. We plan, drill and study evacuations, lockdowns and shelter-in-place responses regularly because as we are reminded on an all-too-often basis that the world we live and work in as educators can be dangerous and, even, inconceivably dangerous at times.

But what about the time outside the school day when after-school activities are being held in our schools and facilities? How good are we at planning for student, staff and community safety between 3:00 and 10:00 p.m.? As an athletic director for a multiple high school district, I know that on any given day during these hours we will have hundreds if not thousands of people on our campuses and facilities participating in and/or attending athletic events. As athletic directors, we have a responsibility to make sure that we are as prepared for an emergency response during after school hours as we are during the school day. This leads me to sharing my experience this past year about how the North Thurston Public Schools (NTPS) Athletics Department took a step in getting better at after-school safety.

As is the case with most district ADs, I wear multiple hats. Along with being the district AD, I am also the Director of School Safety. It's a great professional combination for someone who has spent the majority of his career as a coach, building AD, assistant principal and principal. Safety is always at the forefront regardless of the time of day. In the winter of 2015-2016 I came across a flier from the University of Southern Mississippi's National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) advertising an upcoming National Interscholastic Athletics and After-School Activities Safety and Security Summit. The content of the summit really hit home with my professional responsibilities and tool/skill set. With the blessings of my district, I was off to Mississippi and one of the most valuable conferences I've ever attended.

At the summit, I was asked to be a panelist discussing the topic: How Do You Prepare for a Large Scale Incident at Your Sports Events/After School Activities? In the NTPS, our largest athletic venue is our district stadium (South Sound Stadium). It's a 3500-seat stadium with covered seating on both sides and is widely used throughout the year by the schools and our community. My preparation for the panel and the actual session we were involved in showed me that as a district, we were "okay" in our emergency response plan for South Sound Stadium, but we could do so much more. At the summit, we spent a lot of time working with the NCS4 Best Practices Guide for Interscholastic Athletics and After-School Safety. One of the best practices which really stood out to me, which I don't recall our district doing for quite some time, was a table top activity around a large-scale emergency response at the stadium involving our local first responders and district personnel.

After returning from the summit I set out to arrange for the table top which would be built around an emergency response at one of our heavily attended varsity football games at South Sound Stadium. Two very important things I realized right away were: 1. I was not going to get this done by myself; and 2. It takes time to get something of this scale organized and implemented.

After securing the go-ahead from my assistant superintendent, I reached out to our local Thurston County Emergency Management Office to access their guidance and expertise. It was the best move I could have made. Sonya Kroese, from the Education and Outreach Program; and James Yates, Emergency Management Coordinator were invaluable in getting my project organized and off the ground. Mr. Yates is an experienced facilitator of similar large-scale emergency response exercises and offered his services to this project. It's vital that you find a great facilitator who can manage the room and guide the activity to its goal without getting side-tracked along the way. He was masterful in his preparation and performance.

Our first order of business was to create a purpose statement for the exercise. Our multiple tasks were to test the functions of a multi-agency/multi jurisdiction emergency response to a large scale event at South Sound Stadium including: evaluating the evacuation plan for South Sound Stadium; planning for the reunification of unaccompanied children with parents/guardians; and evaluating the communications/public messaging system we have in place. A daunting, but essential list of tasks, indeed.

Once our purpose was established, our next task was to identify those representatives we wanted/needed around the table. Our local first responders (Lacey Police and Fire; and the Thurston County Sheriff) were givens. We made sure our school resource officers (SROs) as well as NTPS administrators and directors (directors of communications, facilities, operations and maintenance). Athletic directors and administrators of each of our high schools were essential members along with our stadium supervision leader and a representative of the City of Lacey's emergency management department. With a line-up like this it was important that we gave ourselves enough time to make sure we could get on people's calendars, so a mid-August date - three months away - was set for the table top.

During the weeks leading up to the table top I met with Sonya and James several times to go over the plan and do site visits to the stadium. During this time, I also met personally with first responder representatives to talk about their specific procedures and protocols. I didn't want them to be surprised at the meeting, nor did I want to be caught off guard either. Other important things that were taken care of were securing the meeting place, getting reminder emails sent to attendees, having visual aids made including blow-up posters of the facility, and arranging for food at the meeting - a must-have! If you feed them, they will come.

The table top activity, held in the NTPS Board Room, was well attended with more than 20 people taking part. I led off with introductions and basic information. I made a point of being very clear that our emergency response plan for South Sound Stadium was going to be exposed. We were going to find out where our weaknesses and holes were, but that was the point of the exercise - to make us better and safer for our kids, staff, parents and community. I think this statement of transparency set an appropriate tone for the activity. We weren't trying to hide anything, nor did we want anything but honest feedback.

The scenario for the table top activity was the detonation of a large explosive device under the student section of the main grandstand during the homecoming game for one of our high schools. The damage was extensive and among many casualties, there may have been some fatalities. We chose a significant incident which would result in confusion, disorientation, panic and fluidity. Here are some of the things we learned:

• WHO'S IN CHARGE: during an event like our scenario, law enforcement is in charge. We employ a minimum of two Lacey PD officers at each varsity football game at the stadium. These officers would take charge of the situation until a multi-agency incident command including fire/rescue and the school district could be set-up.
• ROLES OF SCHOOL PERSONNEL: athletic directors, both school and district, and school officials are responsible for making sure that the emergency response plan for the facility is carried out. The safe evacuation of students and community members along with the visiting crowd is the priority. Stadium staff under the direction of the district AD must make sure exits are open and accessible. Building ADs make sure the teams are moved to safe locations. Building principals make sure their students are being directed to safety.
• THINGS WE MUST CONSIDER:
  • The safe evacuation of people with disabilities or handicaps.
  • The reunification of unaccompanied youth with parents/guardians.
  • How is traffic flow addressed as people leave the stadium and emergency responders are entering?
  • Are our emergency response plans for the stadium current and accessible?
  • What are the roles of the public address announcer and video messaging systems at the stadium?
  • How does the district communicate with the community during a large-scale emergency event?
  • Does pre-season training of supervision staff and school administrators address the needs of an emergency response at the stadium?

The final product of such an exercise is a daunting reality of where strengths and weaknesses are. The old saying "You don't know what you don't know" was addressed as a result of the table top activity. We now know more of what we need to know in order to make our response to a large-scale emergency more successful. Another quote I use very often is "The body can't go where the mind's never been", meaning that if you think things through ahead of time - walk through the "what-if's" - then when the time comes to respond, you stand a much better chance of having success.

Some of the changes/improvements we have made in the NTPS as a result of this exercise are:

• Stadium supervision staff at South Sound Stadium receive specific training about emergency response.
• During the season, before each game, a supervision bulletin is created and handed out to supervision staff and administrators informing them of events specific to that evening's game and reminding them of emergency response plans.
• The signage at South Sound Stadium has been improved with an emphasis on emergency response.
• Public address announcers have received information on how to respond to an emergency (the NIAAA's publication "The Voice Above the Crowd" is now required reading for all of our announcers).
• The district's communication plan includes a strong social media element and clear delineation of responsibilities regarding who initiates the communication streams
• The communication between the district and local first responders has improved and a common language has been established.

The purpose of this article is not to say that we have it all figured out when it comes to emergency response in the NTPS. We are better than we were, and we are improving all the time. When it comes to safety at our after-school athletic events we've got to work as hard at getting it right as we do during the school day.