Hays County hosts reunification training for local law enforcement, school staff

Hays County law enforcement, school administrators and staff took part in reunification training this week.

The Hays County Standard Response Protocol Task Force brought in the I Love U Guys Foundation to go through its Standard Reunification Method (SRP) - Reunification Exercise through a sponsorship from Austin Regional Intelligence Center.

Reunification takes place when school staff and local emergency responders reunify parents and guardians with their students after an incident requires evacuation from facilities and schools. I Love U Guys Foundation Executive Director John-Michael Keyes said the Standard Reunification Method is based on five actions — hold, secure, lockdown, evacuate and shelter.

“It’s really an all hazard institutional response to stuff that happens in schools,” Keyes said. “Texas has been very proactive. The Texas School Safety Center has incorporated the standard response protocol into their online tools. What it gives us is a foundation in crisis response.”

The two-day training that took place at San Marcos High School on Monday and Tuesday worked with those in Hays County who have a role in reunification to ensure there’s common understanding of the process, establish the use of common language and strengthen the relationships between community partners.

“This grouping and assembly of all the stakeholders tends to persist over time,” Keyes said. “Often the folks that started with SRP, then start working through reunification and now they’re getting together and it’s some of the same faces that might be in a behavioral threat assessment team. The same faces that look at climate and culture activities that can change the nature and flavor of a school. And so, we think one of the hidden side effects of our programs is that it’s a catalyst for the human factor of advancing school safety.”

The I Love U Guys Foundation was created by Ellen and John-Michael Keyes in 2006 after their daughter Emily was killed in a school shooting. Emily sent two text messages on that day, one to her mother Ellen, “I love u guys. K,” and “I love you guys,” to her father. The foundation — which is led and supported by survivors, family members, first responders and community members with a vested interest in safety, preparedness and reunification in schools — trains people around the country in its Standard Response Protocol method.

Keyes said the I Love U Guys Foundations was conducting approximately 200 one-day reunification training sessions per year prior to the pandemic. The nonprofit organization conducted about 30 virtual trainings through the Texas School Safety Center in Texas during the pandemic.

In 2021, the foundation began testing out the two-day session which includes classroom training, tabletop exercise, functional demonstrations and active exercises to prepare stakeholders to conduct an actual reunification of students with their parents and guardians.

Keyes said he expects to do eight two-day sessions per year with 50 currently on the books in addition to the foundation’s one-day training courses.

“One of our core tenets is recovery starts when the crisis begins,” Keyes said. “If you’re planning for the recovery for the crisis, you don’t have time during the crisis. If you look at this process, I would hate to have to invent it on the spot. And so, practicing that reunification process gives districts an edge when something big happens.”

Approximately 130 people took part in the training sessions, according to Hays County Office of Emergency Management Planner Laurie Taylor. She said the purpose of bringing the training to Hays County was to provide first responders and school administrators with the tools, confidence and knowledge of the reunification process to get students back with their parents and guardians.

“This summer has been a little more stressful because of Uvalde,” Taylor said. “And so, we’re just trying to make sure our ducks are a little bit more in a row. Not that we’ve not been prepared but that we’re more prepared and then be able to present to the parents, to the public that we do have a plan. We’ve been working this plan since 2013.”

Doug Wozniak, San Marcos Consolidated ISD director of safety, said brining the I Love U Guys Foundation training to Hays County has been a work in progress since last year.

“We believe in one protocol — one county, one protocol — and we started planning this a year ago when a few of us actually went to one that was identical to this up in Westlake,” Wozniak said. “And after we participated, we said this would be really cool to bring this back to Hays County as another piece to make sure that we’re consistent as a county.”

With the training coming only a few months after the Uvalde school shooting, Wozniak said school safety was fresh on the minds of those in attendance.

“It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where when a tragedy happens everybody all of a sudden jumps on the safety train,” Wozniak said. “We saw it after Parkland where it was, ‘everybody needed a police officer in every school’ and then we started to see just a slight drop off. Then we always get woken up by another tragedy. It’s just human nature to say, ‘Okay, now lets get back to a higher alert level.’ And so, I think what you’ll see this school year is just an increase in awareness from all stakeholders, just that topic of safety and being a little bit more diligent than we ever have been just because of the natural after effects.”