Safeguard Risk Solution’s Gary L. Sigrist, Jr was recently in the news while teaching a webinar on school safety.
ST. LOUIS, MO. (KTVI) – School administrators in St. Louis and around the country were going to class today learning a life lesson. How to save lives if there is an active shooter in a school.
During a webinar Wednesday, a national school security expert told the educators that first responders need to know details of the floor plan of every school.
“We found at a back stairwell and an officer came around here we see officer flowers if the shooter was up at the top here than the officer is a sitting duck.
The speaker of this webinar is security expert Gary L. Sigrist, Jr with more than 30 years experience at Columbus Ohio schools. The program is sponsored by the St. Louis based school reach organization.
Paul Langhorst/SchoolReach: “We started to receive a lot of requests for the archive version of it and materials that we have so what we did and the requests were stemming from the sandy hook incident.”
Valley park school district officials were among more than 12-hundred administrators across the country who watched the webinar which emphasized the importance of building relationships with police and fire departments.
Dr. Bryan Pearlman/Valley Park Elementary Principal: “We do work regularly monthly with our local fire department and other professionals really the key is that we have those relationships it does take a village to keep our kids here safe.”
Paul Langhorst/SchoolReach: /”There’s a great quote in this event is the last time you want to be introduced to your police chief is on the day they are showing up for some sort of emergency.”
Dan Gray: “In addition to developing good relationships and an emergency response plan the webinar expert says don’t let the plan just sit on a shelf. Make sure it is tested in a full scale exercise.”
Dr. Bryan Pearlman/Valley Park Elementary Principal: “That we know where our kids are we know that they are safe we know who’s gone home and that we’re really accountable for all of our children but the testing piece may be a big project but definitely one that’s worth while doing again to keep our kids safe.”
The Valley Park district does have an armed St. Louis County Police Resource Officer every day at its main campus which includes the high school, middle school and elementary school.
See the full article here: http://fox2now.com/2013/01/09/school-safety-experts-give-area-schools-tips/
