Student safety: How Wilmington schools train to confront active shooters

A year ago, officers were dispatched to reports of shots fired at New Hanover High School.

Students and teachers sheltered in place, and within minutes law enforcement arrived. Officers evacuated the building, and district officials said that while the response wasn't perfect, it was as good as it could have been expected in such an extreme, tense situation.

Nine months later, the country was left speechless once again when nineteen elementary school students and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas in May.

School shootings have become such a threat across the country, educators prepare for them as much as possible.

North Carolina requires school districts across the state to conduct one intruder training drill a year to prepare for worst-case scenarios, including how to react when a person enters a school building with a gun.

According to state law, schools are encouraged to include local law enforcement in the lockdown drill. Students are also present for the drills.

As required by the state, New Hanover County Schools does have an emergency operations plan, and a summary of that plan is available online. Beyond that summary, however, little information is available regarding specific types of training conducted with teachers across the Port City.

Some communities across the country have seen reports of teacher training taken to the extreme, some being shot at with pellet guns or hearing shooting noises played over loudspeakers to simulate an active shooter situation.

In Wilmington, the drills appear to be tamer. New Hanover Association of Educators President Cynthia Silva said in her experience, drills are conducted similarly to fire or tornado drills.

Active shooter preparedness in New Hanover County

Last year, when shots were fired inside New Hanover High School, students and staff followed instructions from a command center established in case of a situation like a shooter inside a school. School resource officers took to the hallways immediately to ensure the shooting, which left one student injured, had remained an isolated incident.

Students were quickly evacuated and sent to nearby Williston Middle School. Superintendent Charles Foust said during a news conference later that day that while no one can be perfectly prepared for the situation, staff and students effectively followed protocol taught through lockdown drills to ensure the safety of everyone on the school grounds.

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The district typically holds lockdown drills at schools twice a year, according to an informational flyer online. They are led by principals, safety directors and school resource officers, and are unannounced.

Throughout the drill, principals will announce over the school’s intercom that a lockdown or shelter-in-place drill is in effect. All building doors, including classroom doors, are locked, and teachers are in charge of keeping students calm until the drill is lifted and normal activities can resume.

“We constantly strive to make every facility in our district as safe as possible,” the website reads.

Additionally, the district’s website details that all exterior doors remain locked at schools and visitors are required to check in at the main office at the front of school buildings after they are screened with a video and audio entry system at the front doors. There are also school resource officers assigned to every school.

The district partners with emergency services throughout the county, such as the sheriff’s office, to further ensure safety, according to the website.

Jerry Brewer, public information officer for the New Hanover Sheriff's Office, said the office has not hosted a teacher-specific training this year, but did hold a training before the start of the school year with more than 60 school resource officers.

The training, which took place at Anderson Elementary, was a realistic simulation of active shooter scenarios to prepare officers for an event of an intruder inside a school.

What do intruder drills look like across the US?

North Carolina does not have a recommended model to use for trainings, so schools and local law enforcement have options in how they train staff and students to respond.

One of the frequently used intruder trainings across the country is ALICE Training – short for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. The New Hanover Sheriff’s Office has offered ALICE Training to the community since 2019.

ALICE is meant to “authorize and empower” individuals to take action in a violent situation to increase their chance of survival, according to a Facebook post from the sheriff’s office.

Though it’s unclear if ALICE is used to train teachers, it is known for its K-12 active shooter response training, which includes online and in-person training for teachers. It teaches individuals to be ready in the case of an active shooter and to not become “sitting ducks,” USA Today reported.

Another commonly used training is Run. Hide. Fight., which trains individuals to have an escape plan and to use that if they can. If they can’t get out of the building, they are taught to barricade doors and hide, and fight back if an intruder enters the room they’re in.

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But teachers across the country have reported some of these varying drills have gone too far – the IndyStar, part of the USA Today Network, reported in 2019 that teachers were shot with pellet guns during an intruder training, left with welts and bruises on their bodies. Many states have begun banning simulations that could put individuals’ mental and physical health at risk.

It's difficult to study how effective intruder drills are, USA Today reported, noting that drills can create a false sense of security for some teachers and students, and can cause stress and anxiety.

Nonetheless, some students who have been through active shooter situations have often credited intruder drills with saving their lives.

Contact reporter Sydney Hoover at shoover@gannett.com or on Twitter @sydneymhoover. Join the Education Issues in Southeastern North Carolina Facebook group to stay up-to-date on education news.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: What we know about active shooter training in Wilmington schools