By GRAYSON LEE CAVALIERE
Rutherford County Schools
Next week, RCS administrators will undergo crisis response training for reunification.
When events that require evacuations occur at a school, staff must ensure efficient and accurate parent reunification with their students.
The RCS Safety team is led by Director of Safety Patty Oeser and Assistant Director Sean Martin.
Reunification is an important step in the process after a critical incident has taken place. The first step after any major incident is to ensure all our students, teachers, and staff are safe, the safety team said.
In order to help plan and practice sucessful reunifications, the “I Love U Guys” Foundation and Raptor Technologies (T-REx) have partnered to provide reunification training and exercises. The program combines widely adopted Standard Response Protocol (SRP) and Standard Reunification Method (SRM) with Raptor’s reunification software.
According to the safety team, once it is established that everyone is safe, it is at this point the team turns its attention to accountability and reunification. The end goal is to safely reunite our students with their families as quickly as possible.
The classroom training, which takes place Tuesday and Wednesday, will focus on functional demonstrations and exercises to prepare RCS administrators to conduct an actual reunification of students with their parents or guardians in the event of an evacuation.
Media is welcome to attend. Please contact Rutherford County Schools at (615)-893-5812 to set up a time to attend, arrange interviews, and learn ground rules for attending.