Training to be safe: Elgin Local Schools hosts active shooter drill

The sound of gunfire reverberating inside the halls of a school building is horrifying, even it is just part of a training exercise.

Staff members and students of the Elgin Local School District experienced that sensation firsthand as participants in an active shooter scenario staged Wednesday at the school facility on Keener Road. Marion County law enforcement agencies and fire departments participated in the training session, which Capt. Ryan Zempter of the Marion County Sheriff's Office said they spent several months planning.

According to EducationWeek, there have been 19 school shootings in 2023, resulting in the deaths of 11 people and 19 people being wounded. Seven of the fatalities were students of the schools attacked or other children. Four of the fatalities were school employees or other adults.

Elgin Local Schools Superintendent Lane Warner said the active shooter scenario is part of the district's overall safety plan and is something district officials have wanted to stage for quite some time. He thought that the Elgin staff members and students reacted well to the scenario that was presented.

"We've done some individual training where we knew in advance that we were going to lock down or evacuate," Warner said. "We've practiced the ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) procedures and our kids and staff know that those are the procedures that we would use in an active, fluid situation. I thought our staff did a good job (during the active shooter scenario) in getting our students out of the building when the intruder was far away from their location. They knew that the goal was to get out and get themselves safe at that point.

"The training that we've done in the past definitely showed up today and I was proud of how our students and staff handled the situation. Part of why we wanted to do this was to shore up where we need improve our safety plan. And we saw some procedural things that will help us to be more efficient."

Warner said a debriefing about the exercise will be conducted for school district staff members prior to the end of this academic year.

Zempter said he thought the training exercise went "very well," noting that there were some issues that law enforcement and other first responders will address when they meet on June 8 for a complete debriefing about the event.

"We noticed some lapses today, some things that we need to work on," he said. "I thought communication overall went very well. There's some things we need to work on in terms of our verbiage and communication within the teams, actions that we want to take just to be more efficient in the job that we want to do."

For Zempter, school safety isn't just another topic for training exercises. His wife is an employee at Elgin Local Schools, his children are students in the district, and he is a member of the Elgin board of education. He said he thought the Elgin staff members and students reacted very well during the exercise.

"They've been prepping for this for quite some time," Zempter said. "We're six or seven months into the planning (for the active shooter scenario). The staff and students here did a great job. They were very responsive. I thought they had some great questions (during the training) leading up to (Wednesday's) event. Obviously, some people had some concerns about it, so we tried to provide as much information and training as possible ahead of the actual event."

Deputy Brett Rinker, the River Valley Local School District school resource officer spearheaded the planning for the active shooter scenario and was joined earlier this year by Deputy David Dunaway, who was hired as the Elgin Local School District school resource officer after retiring from the Marion Police Department.

High school students and staff portrayed the shooting victims in the scenario. Each one of them wore a placard explaining the type of injury they were simulating as well as their current physical condition.

Parents of elementary school students were given the chance to have their children opt out of the active shooter scenario.

Students practiced evacuating from the school building to the administration building across the street and then were loaded onto buses for transport to designated "reunification areas," where, in the case of an actual incident, parents would be able to pick them up once the danger had passed.

During the exercise, a school staff member manned a safe room, where they could monitor the live feed from surveillance cameras throughout the school building. The staff member provided play by play, as it was termed, about the simulated shooter's whereabouts in the building. Warner said the surveillance cameras are an invaluable resource for safety inside the school building.

"Before coming to Elgin, I worked for twelve years in a 100-year-old building (the former Pleasant Middle School) and we didn't have any of those modern luxuries that allowed for that ongoing communication throughout the incident," Warner said. "I think having that technology is hugely important."

Pleasant Local Schools Superintendent Tom McDonnell and River Valley Local Schools Superintendent Adam Wickham attended the active shooter scenario as observers. Zempter said future plans include conducting active shooter scenarios at each school district in Marion County.

Email: ecarter@gannett.com | Twitter: @AndrewACCarter

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Training to be safe: Elgin Local Schools hosts active shooter drill