Administrators are learning from the swatting incident and lockdown that impacted the Butler Area School District last month.
Butler Superintendent Dr. Brian White reflected on the testing of school procedures during the school day September 30th.
There can’t be a casual mass dismissal of pulling your kid out one by one,” White said. “All our safety plans have reunification plans which we actually didn’t go into because we weren’t reunifying families. We weren’t in that mode at any of our buildings even after we said all clear hundreds of kids were still getting picked up. The mentality was get the kids out.”
Parents were allowed to pick up their children at school but were not allowed in the building. The surge of parents going to schools also led to traffic delays around the area.
We’re just not designed to do individual dismissals like that really at any of our facilities without enormous backup,” White said. “We’re gonna have to do somethings a little more controlled if we ever have to follow that situation again and/or stop instruction and move into dismissal mode.”
White anticipates sending out a letter to parents later this week with more information about how the district’s reaction could change if faced with a similar situation in the future.