Marcellus faculty and staff participate in safety drills

As part of the district’s regular safety training procedures, Marcellus teachers and staff recently participated in “active shooter” drills at Driver Middle School and Marcellus Senior High School. 

Presented by the Marcellus village police department, the drills began with a brief orientation by village Police Chief Robert A. Wicks, who explained that no real firearms would be used during the drill. Instead, “perpetrators” and responding emergency personnel would carry red and blue plastic guns.

For the DMS drill, Wicks told district employees it would “be obvious” when the exercise had begun. Their only instructions: React as they would during a real emergency.

(The drills took place on a staff development day when students were not on campus.)

Shortly after faculty and staff filed out of the auditorium and toward their assigned rooms, two assailants with plastic handguns and rifles “blasted” their way through the school’s front entrance. Loud pops from a training pistol rang out.
The public address system soon crackled with the voice of Principal Michael Dardaris, who instructed all personnel to initiate lockdown procedures. An eerie silence then fell over the school corridors, interrupted only by the occasional shouts of the gunmen, who rattled doorknobs and called out, “Where’s my kid!?”

During the DMS drill, village police and Marcellus School Resource Officers Earl Smith and John Scanlon eventually “exchanged fire” with and neutralized one suspect and took the second into custody. Then everyone returned to the auditorium for a debriefing, where employees compared notes on what they did and how they felt during the lockdown.

“I would like to express my sincere appreciation – to the school district's SROs and to Chief Wicks and Captain Bernie Podsiedlik – for organizing, leading and facilitating the training simulation and debriefing session,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. Craig J. Tice said. “I realize that drills such as these send a good message that this school district is vigilant and takes student safety most seriously.”

Since the December tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Marcellus district administrators and Board members been working to develop a school operating budget for 2013-14 that provides for a third school resource officer (for KCH Elementary School), as well as the addition of computerized “school pass” scanners in each of the three school buildings.

The scanners, available through the OCM BOCES CNY Regional Information Center, use pieces of photo identification, such as New York state driver licenses, to scan and print photos of adult visitors for school pass stickers. In addition, the computerized system conducts a quick background check on each visitor, by running the driver license number against those on file in the national sex offender registry and database.

During the staff development day, faculty and staff also participated in a mock evacuation to four off-campus sites.