School security, Mustang tradition implemented at Murray Schools

MURRAY – Alan Miller, superintendent at Murray Community Schools implemented a new security system and had an alternative approach to the safety of his students.

Miller installed $25,000 worth of outdoor security cameras on the high school and elementary buildings in 2017.

Miller’s future plans are to replace old door knobs and to do re-keying in order to keep better track of who has access to specific doors and parts of the building.

The keying process is planned to be finished before school starts in August.

“My goal is by the time I step away from all of this, for every school district to develop their own plan because law enforcement is going to be too far away to make a difference,” said Miller.

Aside from the new technology that has been installed, Miller has taken an alternative approach in implementing emergency plans for the students and has gone the extra mile to ensure the safety of the students and staff.

Miller is a Clarke County reserve deputy and put his safety training knowledge toward creating an organization called Educational Leaders for Safe Iowa Schools.

The mission of the organization is to strive to listen and collect input from a variety of members and to focus on the safety of students, staff and the public.

The organization works toward the training and the development of school safety plans.

Miller attended the annual school safety conference at Camp Dodge last summer where he met Frank DeAngelis, the former Columbine High School principal.

At the conference, DeAngelis shared the leadership lessons he learned and how he was able to build a community together after the tragic school shooting in 1999.

Miller was inspired to start a tradition at the school that the students could take with them even after they graduate.

The first Mustang family tradition was started in December 2017. The tradition has the idea of linking students together as a community with real links and every student’s name on them.

Miller first proposed the idea to his teacher leadership team, which later put the tradition into action.

“We can’t control what happens out there but we can control what happens here,” said Miller.

The students were each presented with a link with their names on it.

Each class “adopted” another class. For example, the seniors adopted the fifth grade class and got to know each other.

After introducing the two classes, they put their links together and at the end of the ceremony, the entire school was symbolically a family represented by the links.

Students also had the opportunity to interact with Frank DeAngelis through FaceTime before the ceremony.

The tradition not only included students, but staff and community members that have had an impact on the Mustangs Family.

“I don’t want kids to be in the shadows. They are just as important and I want them to know that,” said Miller.

The Mustang tradition will be annual and all new students and staff will receive a link in the fall.

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CCSD working on emergency plans

Creston Community School District, local law enforcement officials and emergency services are meeting to improve the school district's emergency plans, CCSD Superintendent Steve McDermott said during the June 18 Board of Directors meeting.

"The administrators have been going through a fairly large emergency planning template. We've discussed several features through that plan to make it our own," McDermott said. "The reality is we need that plan and we need plans for several potential things that could happen at school."

In addition, the state is passing down recommendations for how many drills each school district should have for various emergency situations.

"At one point, we were concerned about holding drills for certain things like live shooter drills or intruder drills because we scare the students," McDermott said. "Well, those days are over. Students are already worried about that. We heard it from our high school leadership folks. So, we're going to go ahead and do more drills and practice for some of those items."

McDermott also reported the district will continue going through ALICE (alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate) training.

ALICE training has been updated with recent events from across the country.

"Staff will now take a one-hour workshop exam on the computer so we can be certified as an ALICE district," McDermott said. "Part of that is because we want to be planned appropriately for emergencies and part of that is if we do have a tragedy, we want to be able to say we did the best we could to prepare beforehand."