Drug law violators unwittingly paid for a school safety conference Wednesday at Emporia State University.
Lyon County Sheriff Gary Eichorn approved using money that had been seized through drug-related arrests to pay for a nationally known consultant’s day-long seminar, “Are You Ready?” for law enforcement officers and educators.
The need for the workshop became apparent to ESU’s Toni Bowling after a lockdown situation at the public school in Olpe, where her grandchildren are students. Bowling is director of conferences and workshops for the Jones Institute. Olpe Principal Shari Hatfield told Bowling about a nationally recognized expert in school safety, John Dudley, who founded a crisis management service.
Dudley has been training educators in school safety and interviewing students and school staffs since 1984. He has worked with the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, when then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno assigned the agency the task of studying threats within schools. He also is the author of numerous books and has interviewed thousands of people, including young killers, to gather information on the subject.
Recognizing that Dudley’s fee would necessitate a hefty registration fee, she called Eichorn to investigate the possibility of a partnership between the university and the sheriff’s office. Eichorn agreed, approved the expenditure from the drug fund, and underwrote the seminar.
“We were a little concerned about getting participation,” Bowling said. The partnership with Eichorn’s department eased that concern.
Bowling was able to set the registration fee at a rate that was affordable for most budgets and, instead of the hoped-for attendance of 100 people, about 275 educators and law-enforcement officers registered from Lyon County and across the state. The dramatic spike in registration caused the seminar to be moved from Roe Cross Conference Room to Webb Lecture Hall in the Memorial Union.
“And this tells me, especially from the number of law enforcement officers that were here, that this is a need,” Bowling said.
Eichorn said that with three school districts within the county, the information and training were important to both groups. As part of Eichorn’s decision to pay the consultant’s, between 40 to 45 Lyon County officers and educators attended the seminar at no charge.
Dudley told his audience that expensive equipment — video surveillance, metal detectors and the like — is not the priority for protecting and nurturing the children. He gave attendees a laundry list of possibilities.
Bowling had jotted down about 25 of them, and most were simple:
School districts could list the five most important things a teacher needed to do in a crisis situation. To ensure they had ready access to the points, they could be printed on the backs of name tags.
An orange vest could be kept in each adult’s desk drawer to slip into quickly in times of emergency. The bright color would make adults in authority easily identifiable and accessible by both students and emergency personnel.
Exit signs could be put along the bottoms of the doors; in case of fire, children crawling below the smoke would have an easier time finding a way outside.
Emergency plans could be reviewed by teachers annually, and drills could be held so children could practice responses to many different types of emergencies, from fires to tornados to intruders to lockdowns. In case of an actual emergency, they would be familiar with the drill and less fearful and anxious, Dudley said after the seminar.
For the children’s well-being and safety, however, it is important to be in tune with what is happening in children’s daily lives.
“Take time to have kids share. What’s going on with them? Where are they coming from?” Dudley said.
Most often, students and/or staff have been told or overheard key information about a threat and do not reveal it. He wants that atmosphere of secrecy or hesitancy to change “so staff and kids can come forward and communicate,” he said.
Children who bring weapons into school to kill students and staff seldom just “snap,” he said.
“This is premeditated days, oftentimes weeks. This is premeditated murder,” Dudley said. “... They hurt and then they hate, and then eventually they lash out. They get to the harm.”