Brownwood ISD and the Brownwood Police Department recently conducted a district-wide school safety evaluation and reviewed a wide variety of procedures and protocol.
School Resource Officer Fred Bastardo gave a report on the evaluation to school board trustees Monday night and made several recommendations on how to improve school safety.
“Our recommendations are to create a district-wide safety committee, uniform procedures on communication color cards within the district, reunification plan for each campus where students are released to parents, training and debriefings after critical incidents, and safety training for staff,” Bastardo said.
The recommendations were based on an extensive review of existing emergency and crisis preparedness planning, security crime and violence prevention policies, physical security measures, professional development and training, school security and police staffing, examination of support service roles, internal security, school-community collaboration, and entering and exiting procedures. Bastardo and Officer Chandra Means also performed walk-through evaluations of each school campus.
“Some of this stuff is already being implemented and already being done,” Bastardo said. “It’s a time consuming process, but I really like the direction that the district is going; moving forward with everything that we have talked about.”
BISD Superintendent Reece Blincoe said that the district will conduct more planning over the summer with some of the recommendations and will be able to implement more of them in the fall, including the district-wide safety committee.
Brownwood Assistant Chief of Police James Fuller told the school board that area law enforcement will be ready to respond quickly in the case of an emergency at any of the school campuses.
“Anytime there is an active shooter type situation at a school district, you are not only getting the response of the Brownwood Police Department, but you will get it from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office; every constable that still handles a revolver will be there,” Fuller said. “Response times would be under 2 minutes at any school in my opinion based on experience of screaming for help; you get help.”
Fuller said that the goals of the school safety evaluation are to ensure that law enforcement is providing efficient and effective help.
Police officers are also visiting campuses to ensure that they are familiar with the layout of each school.
Bastardo said that Northwest Elementary has already implemented an emergency evacuation drill to test how quickly the campus could respond in an emergency.
“They went ahead and did a total school evacuation on their own,” Bastardo said. “They already had the protocol in place and they went ahead and tried it, and I think it was successful for them.”
Officer Bastardo will continue to be the School Resource Officer for another three years, and he actively visits all school campuses on a regular basis, according to school officials.
