(Spirit Lake)– A collaborative effort involving the four school districts in Dickinson county and other key stakeholders, including law enforcement, is entering another school year. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret tells KUOO news they’ve been holding quarterly meetings since the collaboration first started back in 2022…
“We started off talking about responses to say, an active shooter situation or something similar at one of our schools. We want to make sure all of our schools are aware of how public safety’s going to respond and then we want to make sure the schools review their plans and try and make things as similar as possible so when you go to any of the buildings in the four districts the response is going to be somewhat similar amongst the districts and of course they know what to expect when public safety comes in.”
Ehret says it was also in 2022 when Dickinson county decided to move ahead with a new emergency radio system that will allow schools and buses to communicate directly with law enforcement…
“At that time the Governor’s School Safety Program was coming out and they were going to be placing radios in each school building across the state. Those radios were going to be set up to work on the state radio system and that’s what we were going to be going to as a county so it just all kind of fell together that we should include the schools with our project. So that meant putting radios in all of the buses in all four school districts in the county. We completed that this summer and so the schools will be ready to go this fall with the new school year. They’ll all have the new radios in their buses and then once we go on line on the public safety side later this fall or early winter, we’ll all be on the same system. We’ll be able to communicate with everybody should the need arise.”
Ehret says they were also the beneficiary of some funds raised through a charity golf event over the past couple of years…
“For two years in a row we got $10,000 from that. We took that money this last spring and we purchased stop-the-bleed kits. There will be one of those kits in every classroom in the county and that will just add to whatever supplies and kits the schools already have in their classrooms. We felt that was a good use of the funds we received and like with all that other stuff we hope we never have to use it but it will be there if we do need it, so we’ve worked on that. We’re working on hopefully doing some exercises, or a large exercise, next spring, hopefully, at one of the schools with all of our responders and everybody in public safety in the schools as well. In the meantime I know public safety or law enforcement has been doing some regular trainings at the schools on their own and all of that’s just beneficial and it really helps keep everybody up to date on training and everything.”
Ehret says the Dickinson County EMS Association is training school personnel on the use of the stop-the-bleed kits. He says the proactive approach involving schools and law enforcement exemplifies a shared dedication to the well-being and safety of the community.
