Walker County Schools’ emergency preparedness plan is getting ready for some “plain talk.”
Most students, parents and school staff won’t notice a difference unless there’s a real emergency, Walker schools risk manager Terry Gober said. But the changes — including a move from codes to regular language during emergencies — help communications between school staff and emergency officials and improve plans for reuniting students and parents if there’s an evacuation, he said.
The change in language to common speech, known in the emergency services arena as “plain talk,” is a shift happening nationwide.
“We used to do everything by codes,” Mr. Gober said. “Like a ‘code blue’ would come over the intercom, that means ‘go into shutdown,’ for instance.
“Now you just tell them, ‘We have an intruder in the building, go into lockdown.'”
He said teachers couldn’t always remember codes and special phrases, especially in stressful situations.
“It was causing a state of confusion throughout the school,” he said.
Another update will enlarge “reunification” areas where school officials will match up students and parents in the wake of an evacuation, he said. In a school emergency, he said, many family members may show up in separate cars to claim their students.
“You take a school like LaFayette High School with 1,000 students in it, you’ll have 3,000 cars show up,” he said. “You’ve got to have an area big enough to handle that.”
He noted that parents should know that reunification areas have nothing to do with weather-related dismissals.
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said the two moves will make emergency situations run more smoothly and keep the people involved safer.
“The whole purpose of ‘plain talk’ is to be unified nationwide so that all emergency responders, including school officials, will be able to understand the communication between different groups of individuals,” Sheriff Wilson said.
Larger reunification areas will improve safety when anxious family members are seeking students, he said.
“I think the goal here is a safer school and a safer environment,” he said.