Lincolnview evacuation drill goes well

VW independent/submitted information

Lincolnview Local School District successfully completed a full evacuation drill on Monday morning, moving the district’s approximately 900 students from the school site to another location off-campus. The drill was performed as part of a districtwide emergency response plan.

The plan is a preparatory measure and will be implemented in the event of a local disaster or school emergency. The drill was completed in conjunction with the Van Wert County Sheriff’s Office, Middle Point Fire Department, and the Van Wert County Emergency Management Agency.

“The safety of our students, faculty, and staff is a constant discussion at Lincolnview Local Schools,” said Superintendent Jeff Snyder. “The board of education, administration, teachers and various safety agencies in the county have all partnered to continue to evaluate and enhance the school’s safety.

“As a district, we needed to take the next step and practice evacuating all of our students, faculty, and staff to a safe location,” he added.

Snyder said there were plenty of challenges in evacuating students.

“The challenges we first dealt with were in just trying to get 900 kids onto 16 school buses in such a way that they weren’t crisscrossing each other and not walking through each other,” he said.

Snyder said the drill took approximately 20-25 minutes to complete, but noted that speed was not a priority on the first run-through. Just executing the district evacuation plan to see what works and what doesn’t was more important, he added, calling the drill a “win-win” for the district.

“I felt we were well-prepared in some of our logistics, but once you start doing it, there’s a better way to do it,” he said.

One thing immediately identified as needing tweaked was the way school buses are parked in the bus garage. Snyder said buses need to be backed into the garage in the future, so drivers have better visibility to pull from the garage while students are walking in the area. Because of all the students walking to buses, drivers had to back out of the garage one at a time to maintain safety, which slowed the evacuation.

In addition to practicing the drill, the school faculty and administration discussed appropriate actions to take during this type of evacuation with students from all grade levels, kindergarten through 12th grade. Snyder said the drill and accompanying discussions are designed to prepare students to act quickly and to minimize fear should an emergency occur.

“An evacuation is never a simple procedure even under seemingly ideal circumstances,” Elementary Principal Nita McKinney said. “The purpose of the drill was to practice in case of a real situation and to identify areas to improve our current plan.

“Knowing we have support from safety officials in the community who are able to provide suggestions for improvements is very important when trying to keep our students and staff safe at all costs,” she added.

Students, faculty, and staff were instructed to load district buses bound for a predetermined secure location. Following attendance and a brief discussion of the drill, the participants reloaded the buses and returned to the school.

“This was an opportunity for our school to learn what worked and what didn’t,” said High School Principal Brad Mendenhall. “We were able to take feedback from the sheriff’s office, staff, and other safety personnel to help us prepare to the best of our ability.”

In the meantime, while the drill will help the district develop a better plan to evacuate students, Snyder also noted that teachers and staff are also being trained to be flexible and make needed changes if a situation makes the written plan unworkable.

“We want teachers to be able to think on their feet,” the superintendent said, adding that student safety may depend on staff members realizing the district evacuation plan won’t work in a particular situation and coming up with an alternative on the spur of the moment.