Huntley High School implements security strategies in response to national school crises

The headline reads simply – “Huntley: If we’re next, we’re ready.”

It sits starkly above an editorial in the March issue of “The Voice,” a student-produced publication at Huntley High School. The editorial is not about an upcoming athletic contest, or next week’s science fair.

This headline is the response of Huntley High School’s students to the February 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and to so many other similar disasters at schools throughout the nation in the last few years.

The publication’s editorial board wrote the editorial. It reflects the attitudes of students themselves, who have always been the most vulnerable victims, the ones most often in harm’s way. Recently the Voice’s staff attended the Columbia Scholastic Press Association meeting in New York, which included journalism sessions with students from schools around the country. They heard a presentation by the Eagle Eye (student publication) staff of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, describing the February 14 shooting and the vigil for the more than 30 victims afterward.

“Just as the Parkland community is rebuilding after their tragedy, we are instilling values in our community to be aware of our surroundings, spread kindness, work through drills to continually improve measures, and come together as one,” the editorial says.

The publication’s editors, in order to get their message across in a dramatic way for the March cover, posed an unidentified person standing outside the new main entrance to Huntley High School, holding a handgun.

“All of our administrators have stressed the importance of being aware of our surroundings, in doing this, we encourage our student body to ‘walk up’ in an effort to spread kindness,” the editorial states.

“Walk up to the kid who sits alone and ask him to join your lunch table. Walk up to the kid who never has a voluntary partner and offer to work with them. Walk up to your teachers and ask them how their days are going. Walk up to someone in the hallway and smile.”

“We want to come together now rather than later at a vigil, where we bow our heads and hold candles in remembrance of the loved ones we lost,” the editorial concludes.

On several occasions in recent weeks, the Sun Day met with Huntley School District 158 officials and came away with extensive information about the many safety initiatives that have been established at the school in the past three years.

Everything starts with Adam Dean, the district’s Chief Security Officer. A former detective in the Huntley Police Department, Dean was hired in 2015 to design and implement a “best practices” safety program in all schools and departments. This includes the high school and seven elementary and middle schools scattered among three campuses, and in all academic and administrative departments. The District now serves almost 10,000 students in grades K-12, including 3,100 at the high school.

In the Voice editorial, Dean described a major part of his job this way, describing an active shooter: These individuals are here to kill, what are we doing best to hinder that?”

“We have organized school safety teams, selected and trained campus security assistants, and established a stronger safety culture throughout the district,” Dean said. “We are working to create a positive influence in the district, to establish the idea that it’s a different world today, we have to protect as well as learn.”

A school resource officer, who is an armed police officer, has been in attendance full-time at Huntley High School for several years.

Another initiative is adding safety responsibilities to the jobs of the four academic deans at the high school. One of these is Tom Kempf, who took the job of Emergency Response Coordinator in 2015. He coordinates the safety-related drills, facilitates evacuations, acts as liaison to Dean, and communicates to ensure that everyone is safe and secure, according to the Voice editorial.

“We try to make our drills as realistic as possible,” Kempf said. “Each year, on a day before the students arrive for the school year in August, we run a simulated active shooter drill with our faculty and staff members. The Huntley Police Department comes in with a simulated shooter, and we use a track meet starter’s gun. Teachers are placed in three simulated scenarios – a regular classroom, a hallway, or the cafeteria. Teachers and police work together. We simulate victims. For me, it’s all about taking care of kids, and creating a safety awareness culture.”

But this isn’t all. The District has:

1. Been the first area district to add an anonymous tip telephone line.

2. Established a bullying committee that provides students and parents with initiatives and information regarding their relationships inside and outside the school.

3. Implemented “Gaggle” district-wide. This is an Internet filtering system used in the investigation of Internet-related communications.

4. Added shatter-proof glass to all school front entrances. According to High School Principal Scott Rowe in the Voice editorial, this does not prevent an intruder from entering a school, but it provides time for staff and students to get to safe locations and positions after an initial alarm.

5. Added video-secured entrance systems at all schools.

6. Published an emergency response book annually to keep everyone constantly updated on emergency procedures.

7. Installed a new security camera system on all school buses.

At the Columbia Scholastic Press Association session in New York, Kyra Parrow, senior yearbook editor at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, provided this sobering but hopeful statement (quoted in the Voice editorial): “We were going to do a spread on Valentine’s Day (the day of the shooting), and we’re still going to do that. We have the pictures, we have the stories, and there was love on campus…up until 20 minutes before the bell rang.”

(The Sun Day thanks Dan Armstrong, District 158’s director of public engagement, for providing extensive information on the district’s safety and security activities, and for setting up interviews with Kempf and Dean).

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