NewsLocal News

Actions

Aransas Pass ISD ramping up response to emergency situations

Posted at 6:51 PM, Aug 31, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-31 20:01:03-04

Aransas Pass ISD is ramping up its response to emergency situations. Beginning this school year, the district implemented the Standard Response Protocol, also known as SRP.

Last year, a bomb threat was made at Aransas Pass High School. It was an emergency situation that left many, including junior student Allen Poimbuff, worried.

“The principal said on the intercom that we have to evacuate because of the bomb threat,” Poimbuff said. “I was worried what was going to happen,” he added.

Wayne Bennett, the principal of Aransas Pass High School, said it was then that the district knew it had to implement a better response protocol.

“We’ve had some responses in place,” Bennett said. “We just didn’t feel like they gave us the language that was easily understood,” he added.

The Standard Response Protocol allows everyone to be on the same page. When students and staff hear words like ‘lockout, lockdown, hold, shelter, or evacuate,’ everyone knows what to do.

Signs are even hung up in the districts’ schools explaining what the SRP is, and how to respond. Those signs are hung up in every building within the district, at every entrance and exit of the buildings, and in every classroom.

Aransas Pass police are helping the district implement the Standard Response Protocol. Over the summer, police trained staff using the SRP so they are well prepared in the case of an emergency.

“The goal is a shared lexicon or shared language,” Eric Blanchard said, the Aransas Pass Chief of Police. “We need to be ready because you don’t know where the next event is going to happen,” he added.

And soon, students will be experts in SRP too.

“It makes me feel a little bit safer to know that we are taking those protocols, and that we are being informed of them and what to do with these kinds of things that happen,” Tyler Edison said, a junior at Aransas Pass High School.

The SRP isn’t just for schools. The City of Aransas Pass also plans to implement the protocol. That would include any city buildings and businesses within the community.