[Music] aoy minetonka I'm David law superintendent of minetonka schools thanks for joining us for this episode of our district podcast aoy minetonka one of the three ongoing goals that our school board has set for the district is excellence and well-being connection and belonging a key action step outlin within that goal is to create a welcoming inclusive and safe environment for all students and that extends to our staff families and visitors as well safety is something on all parents minds and on the minds of our teachers and staff and we take the responsibility of providing a safe place for students to learn and for staff to work very seriously joining me today are two members of our leadership team who have helped us make considerable strides in this area over the past year Scott gerer our security and Emergency Management coordinator and Dr Jackie Getty our executive director of communications thank you both for being here please take a moment to tell us about your background and connections to the district well I grew up in the minaka school district I've lived in the district my entire life and have three daughters that went through minaka schools and I spent about three decades in law enforcement before coming to the school district as security coordinator so strong connections to our school district and to our community here yeah I think you ran cross country here didn't you Scott cross country in track and a little bit of tennis as well yes and we we've presented and seen one of your colleagues that teaches in the district yeah there's a few there's a few teachers in the district that are uh former classmates of mine very fun Jackie um my name is Jackie Getty I'm the executive director of communications and I've been here almost eight years I keep saying seven but actually going on eight now so uh starting the eth year um my background's in journalism that's where I started my career television journalism and I did that for about 11 years then I went into public relations worked for United Way for a while and then uh worked in highered marketing and Communications and uh higher Ed's interesting because you always get a little bit of you know somebody decides they want to move on to something so that job becomes a new opportunity do you also want to take on government relations do you also want to take on University relations so I got to do quite a bit there and I was there 11 years and then now have been in the district leading the communications team for the last eight and it'll be interesting to hear your connection to Safety in the district so fascinating thank you Scott you've been on this rule just about 15 months what are some of the things you've been working on since July of 2024 well initially it was uh really just learning more about the district and what was already in place both from a security standpoint uh whether that be physical security or plans and preparedness and there's been a lot of great things that have been done within the district uh especially as it relates to our our buildings to make them more safe and secure for everyone and then taking a look and kind of doing an inventory so to speak of what what plans do we have in place for crisis that may come up and also spending a lot of time talking with our District staff whether that's District service center staff as well as teachers and other staff across the district just to get a sense from them as to what they believe needs to be done to uh continually try to improve Safety and Security so you have a background in law enforcement leadership what are some of the things you did to become familiar with best practices school safety and crisis response I've had a chance to sit down and meet with a lot of my counterparts in other school districts around the metro area which has very been very beneficial and also just uh doing a lot of research on what are some of the best practices around the country um we have some great school districts here in Minnesota but there's a lot of other things going on across the country that are kind of Cutting Edge and as I think we all know the thread environment the security environment is constantly changing so learning about that learning what's worked well in District district could that be something we could replicate here in minaka schools what people might not know a difference we have two police liaison from the Min minaka Police Department in the high school what's their role versus what your role might be yes we are fortunate we have two school resource officers that are Min or minaka police officers and their role is to be present in high school primarily which they have an office in the high school to establish those ongoing relationships on a day-to-day basis with the students but deeper than that to investigate any sort of criminal acts that may be taking place or threats within the school itself uh I work with them very closely along with all the law enforcement Partners we have seven different law enforcement agencies in the district and part of my role is to act as a liaison with all of those those law enforcement agencies I think that's where my background comes uh comes in handy so to speak I have prior relationships with most of those individuals and I understand how law enforcement operates some of what their limitations are and some of what their capabilities are as it relates to responding to events taking place at schools you've talked a little bit about connecting with staff what are some of the biggest projects you've undertaken in the first year and a half yeah there's been a quite a a petful projects that uh myself and others have undertaken especially Jack here in Communications um one of those is to come up with a comprehensive reunification training plan in event that one of our schools would become unusable and we had to evacuate that that U school for whatever reason move those students and staff to an offsite location and then reunite them with their parents and we partnered with a group called The I love you guys Foundation who's nationally recognized on um preparing schools Nationwide on how to respon to crisis especially related to things like active Shooters but more so than just the initial response how to then go through systematically and start the healing process and especially getting through that unification process so we had a couple day training that um was very beneficial so some of that also writing and drafting some emergency response plans revising some of what was already in place to make sure that the plans that we had were workable for minaka school and then training all of our staff going around to each and every school training each staff member uh in group settings on how to how to respond to things like active Shooters that's been a big project and is ongoing project well that is quite a bit of work and um I know that uh being in front of Staff in every me building in the district is a lot of time a lot of energy and a lot of opportunities to answer questions um Jackie what role has Communications played in supporting these safety efforts yeah I think when you think about emergency communications or emergency situations Communications is such a big key component of it how are we communicating to the people that are involved in it how are we communicating to their loved ones at home to parents to our community and so Scott and I started meeting early when he started as he was kind of mapping out his plan for where he saw strengths in the district and where he saw things that we really needed to improve or to develop if we hadn't when he talked about the reunification process we looked at several different groups landed on the I love you guys Foundation then really worked with them closely to determine what did we need because they had a lot of different approaches that they could take and we helped them craft that two-day um training for 60 of our people and then revised it again so Scott now has a 4-Hour presentation that he can give to staff that weren't able to make it and really the approach with that is that it isn't student facing roles that would be deploying the reunification site they'd be with their students so our job was to really talk to to the staff who would be deployed to the site where the kids would be reunified and to teach them and go through training about how that would work so a big piece of that kind of communication support was to make sure that people understood their roles that we were communicating it out clearly to the people that would be impacted by it and then two as he talked about the we have an emergency procedures manual it's not that we didn't have emergency procedures in the past but we really didn't have a comprehensive manual that everybody in every school every leader was going by and so to be able to pull that all together and make that people felt like there was always a plan and that here is how to contact everyone um you know grab your guide and go it's also online for our administrator so that has been a big Focus U and then to we had begun meeting before Scott was hired with the henpen County Emergency Management Group I know you attended some of the meetings I would go every month um or every quarter when they held them but having Scott join those and really take the lead on those relationships has been a game changer for us so that has been wonderful to have that connection the fire officials the EMS and law enforcement were all involved in our reunification thanks to Scott and they also as you know partnered with us on the B smart initiative letter that we sent to All Families so hennipin County sheriff and Carver County Sheriff um signed that and that was about gun storage safety that went out to All Families um and that was part of the relationship that Scott helped to build too so I think Communications is a piece in a lot of these different um aspects and it's been good to be able to work side by side and say okay where do you need support are there pieces that we need to create that are you know as simple as signage or is it a is it a whole plan the other thing that we really partnered on was that we um developed um really revised an active shooter response staff training video uh and worked on a a pass script but then really revised it using a lot of the tech um uh terminology that we learned from the I love you guys foundation and processes and involved the law enforcement and EMS and fire officials that Scott have built relationships with so they were part of that video as well so that was something we produced internally and then you guys have used to to train staff at all the buildings well that's just a lot of of action in a short period of time Scott I want to dig back this is you've mentioned it a few times what are some intentional ways you've correct connected with law enforcement um to move these things forward we have regular meetings both formal and informal with law enforcement I was just meeting with the representative from minaka Police Department yesterday on an issue so certainly the relationship we have with the SRO but we have a very good relationship with all the law enforcement agencies that serve our school district one example of that is that every spring law enforcement does a regional response training to train their officers and their supervisors how to respond in the event of an active shooter situation we were the first school district to be invited to participate and attend that same training so myself Jackie and our director Health Services attended that all day training alongside law enforcement so we have a mutual understanding with our law enforcement Partners we have a good understanding of how they might respond to an emergency situation but we've also been able to impart on them how we would respond as a school district to an emergency situation so that communication is ongoing it takes place daily and weekly and the relationship that we have with our law enforcement uh Partners here in the minaka school district I believe is unparalled anywhere that I've experienced before well we're fortunate for that because we know that our community feels safe with um good partnership and good open lines of communication can you talk a little bit about what's next you've talked about staff training and some videos and re reunification and maybe a manual that's gone out and training for administrators what are the next nine months going to be in terms of projects well first I think I'll talk about training because training is not a one anddone situation and as we all know the threat environment across our country changes quite rapidly so um number one we will continue to offer training each and every year to our staff because we tend to do what we are trained to do and the last time to learn about how you should respond during an emergency is during that emergency so we want all of our staff to have a good understanding and be proficient with what they should be doing and what they should not be doing during an emergency so that's some of what I think the ongoing role for this will be as well but other things looking at what's out there I mentioned the threat environment that is constantly changing but there's also things like technology that can help us um improve safety at our facilities whether that is physical structure security at our schools which is constantly involving or whether that's um device that we can offer to whether that be staff members or cameras in our school district things that will help us provide an overall picture of what's happening within our school district and in the event of an emergency help us more seamlessly handle that emergency itself but also work seamlessly with law enforcement and making sure that we are training the same way that law enforcement is that we're using that common terminology um between law enforcement and uh and our school staff as well do you want to talk about the terminology I brought that up but I think that we've had questions about what is a hold what is secure that might be yes so one of the things that we rolled out this year again in partnership with the I love you guys Foundation is some new and updated terminology that we've rolled out to all of our staff at every school and everybody's familiar with the term lockdown and what that kind of constitutes locks lights and getting out of sight in the classroom and we drill on that same with fire drills and evacuating um during a fire drill or during a real fire situation as well as severe weather and we drill all of those things as well but there's two new terms that we've now rolled out to all of our staff at every school and that's hold and secure so a secure situation might be a situation where there's something of a threatening nature outside the school district that could be um some type of police action or something going on outside we actually just had a recent example at minaka high school where we went into a secure mode and this simply means that any staff or students that are outside the building would come inside the building we would make sure all those exterior doors are locked school and classes would go on as normal and then once we get the all clear that the situation whatever that might might be outside the building has resolved itself we can go back to normal operations the second term that we now have instituted is something called a hold that's a situation that doesn't rise to let's say the level of a lockdown but that's a situation where there may be something taking place in the school School say in a hallway we've had a couple scenarios like this where there've been a a medical situation involving a student or staff member something that we need to bring in let's say First Responders to to take care of a situation and we don't want our students or staff to be in the hallways mixing with that observing what's happening in that case the principal of that school would get on the intercom and just instruct staff to please hold your kids in the classroom until that situation is resolved we've had a couple of those already this year and that's that's commonplace and that's I think a good situation understanding what to do what not to do and what constitutes a whole to secure a lockdown Etc so that's been a real focus of ours as to training all of our staffs and and also at minaka high school they've done a great job at familiarizing the students as well with what does a hold mean what does a secure mean so that if they hear this over the intercom they know what that means yeah I it is a change and I think parents think anytime there's some protocol in place at school the their fears go to the worst and it is far more common even something like a stray dog outside the building that we're not sure that it's safe to be our own CR Kids and so we bring our kids in or a stay dog that runs into the building we go into hold until we can get it out of the system both of those have happened in my career and and we want parents to know that we use safety protocol for far more than just the highest level of concern so is there anything that we didn't cover today that you think would be critical for our community to he I think it might be interesting for people to know that when we do have um surveys that go out on a variety of things that although parents tell us year-over-year that more than 95% of them say that they feel that their school that their child's in is safe um they will also say you can't do enough with safety keep our schools safe do more with safety it's come up on staff surveys it it came up on the facility study task force survey uh it's come up in community surveys and it's not because they don't feel our buildings are safe it's because you can't get too safe so that is something that might surprise people but and Scott anything we didn't cover today uh I think we did a good job of covering things I'll read it what what Jackie said that uh you know I think there's things in being a parent myself um first and foremost we want our kids to be safe at school and I think we are doing that right now um second to that and equally important of course is providing a great education I think menaka School District certainly has a history of doing that as well and I think we just need to continue to strive to make sure that uh we're certainly working on the educational aspects but we're constantly looking at Safety and Security inside and outside our buildings well thank you both for taking a little bit of time out of your day to talk with me and our community about the things we've done to really accelerate our safety protocols our reunification practices our staff training our hard facilities our communication practices all go into the parts of being a safe school system as part of our goal about being welcoming and belonging in creating a safe environment for our students and staff and Community thank you for joining us today on this important topic about school safety to learn a little bit more about what's been happening in the last year and a half to improve our school's safety we'll see you again for another important topic thanks again [Music]