Nearly every student and teacher in the U.S. has gone through at least one fire drill, and likely knows what to do if a school building is burning.

But what to do during a flood? An earthquake? An invasion by an armed intruder?

That’s what about half of the campus safety coordinators from Pajaro Valley Unified School District learned this past week during a three-day crisis management training.

The training, sponsored by Sacramento-based company D-Prep, covered subjects ranging from search and seizure to dealing with major natural disasters, and studied topics such as gang dynamics and ways to relate to students.

John Kane, chief executive of D-Prep and a former Sacramento police Lieutenant, said the training is especially important in this state, which can be subject to several different types of natural disasters.

“If it can happen anywhere, it happens here,” he said.

State law mandates that every school have a crisis management plan, but that’s only the first step, Kane said.

“The plan has no use if the people aren’t trained,” he said. “Everyone needs to be able to translate that plan into action.”

Chet Somera, a trainer with D-Prep, pointed out that no child has ever died in a school fire, primarily because of the frequent drills conducted by schools.

The same should be true for every emergency, he added.

The three-day course is mandated by state law and, in a time when some campuses need full-time police officers patrolling their campuses, helps campus safety coordinators understand their role in a changing student culture.

“With the increase in violence, campuses are seeing that these are very important people to have around,” said Linda Perez, project director for Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance, which presented the training.

In a 2008 California Healthy Kids Survey by WestEd, five percent of 679 Pajaro Valley fifth-graders said they had brought a gun or knife to school, while 26 percent said they had seen a classmate with a weapon.

In PVUSD secondary schools, about 6 percent of ninth-graders reported carrying a gun to school, and 12 percent said they had brought another type of weapon, such as a knife or club.

Only about half of all the students surveyed said they feel safe at school.

Tracy Keenan, senior research analyst at Applied Survey Research, said that the PVUSD has seen a decrease in physical fights, and a rise in the number of students who said they felt safe at school.

Perez said this can be partly attributed to the safety training, anti-bullying initiatives and to a focus on family participation in schools.

“I think the overall climate of schools have changed as a result of these programs,” Perez said.

D-Prep conducts similar sessions throughout the state, as well as crisis training for police agencies. The training is also offered at some community colleges, but D-Prep is the only company that travels to the sites where they’re needed.

“Look, the lives of our kids are at stake,” Kane said. “You’re giving your child to a school, and you have every reason to expect that they’ll be safe and that the people running the school know how to handle an emergency.”

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(Published in 11/15/08 edition)

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