Will County agencies build protocols for reuniting parents, students after school emergencies

With about a month to go before the new academic year begins for most Will County schools, county agencies led an emergency drill for first responders and local school personnel.

The Will County Emergency Management Agency and the Will County Regional Office of Education partnered Wednesday to hold a training for school staff and first responders at the University of St. Francis in Joliet.

The focus of the program was on reunifying parents and students when an emergency happens.

The training gave EMA employees, first responders, staff from local schools and the Will County Health Department an opportunity to walk through those scenarios from different perspectives.

After attending several hours of training, attendees were split into groups and instructed to play either parents or students, while EMA employees walked them through different stations that would be set up for reunification. After completing the walk-through, the participants switched roles.

“It’s been very effective because it helps put principles to practice,” said Antione Edwards, director of safety and security at Joliet Public Schools District 86, who was participating in the event. “It helps the staff get different perspectives, and reduces some of the anxiety about this sort of situation and if we’re ready. It isn’t perfect, but it helps gain some confidence.”

In the event of an emergency, USF is one of several locations in the Joliet area that could be used for students to be taken to as they wait for parents or guardians to pick up them up. The exact location would be selected at the time of the emergency based on a variety of factors.

The reunification method used in the training and by the Will County EMA is based on the Standard Reunification Method developed by the “I Love U Guys” Foundation, which EMA Director Allison Anderson calls “the national best-practice methodology.”

“Reunifying students with their families after an incident is one of the most emotionally charged and logistically complex aspects of school safety planning,” Anderson said. “This exercise ensures we are building strong partnerships and communication channels long before a real crisis occurs.”

Setting up reunification

During the drill, or a real-life scenario, students would be evacuated from their school buildings via bus to a gathering area at the reunification site, while adults picking up students would be told to enter the campus at a neighboring building.

EMA workers walked participants through the process that parents would experience, confirming their identities and filling out a student pickup form.

“Having a paper form helps us keep track of people and can keep parents occupied as we work through the process,” Will County EMA preparedness and recovery manager Chelsea Bowen said. “This process can get complicated very quickly.”

Once their forms are filled out, parents would continue to a verification station, where their identity would be compared with the school district’s list of emergency contacts for a student. If they are not on a list, the student’s primary parent or guardian would be contacted to get approval for the present person to pick up the student.

Parents who are approved would be sent to a waiting area while “accountants” go through the list of students present in the holding area. If a student is present, their parent will be called out and escorted by first responders or school officials to the reunification area outside the student holding area.

If a student is unaccounted for or hospitalized, the parent would be escorted to a room to speak with a counselor or first responder who could explain the situation and escort them to their vehicle or to the hospital.

Bowen said that the process has been designed to prevent trauma for parents and students by keeping parents whose students are unaccounted for separate from the reunification area, working with first responders to locate missing students as quickly as possible, and by providing students with tools to reduce anxiety.

Students waiting for their parents or guardians to pick them up can be provided with headphones, fidget toys and other anxiety-reducing items while they wait. Those care packages are provided by the Will County Health Department.

Once parents are at the reunification location, the students would be called to the window to identify their parent or guardian before being released to them.

Working out the ‘wrinkles’

“This has been very helpful,” said Jeff Bean, director of safety and security at Troy School District 30-C. “It’s really giving our people a chance to go through all of this, even throwing in some potential wrinkles to work around. It’s been really effective.”

Some of the “wrinkles” worked into the simulation included parents who needed translation services, and guardians who were not listed as emergency contacts but were called when the designated contact couldn’t make it fast enough. Other scenarios involved a student with high anxiety and a missing student.

“We want to test these procedures so we can see where we can improve,” Bowen said. “We have evaluators here watching from the state and county, as well as colleges and other agencies. They are observing and taking notes and will give us suggestions on ways we can make the system work smoother.”

Some of the factors considered and worked through are the logistics of each practiced unification site, as well as how to track down unaccounted for students – including older students who may have gotten out of the school building but tried to head home independently without going to the reunification site.

“These are all things we’re working through,” Bowen said.

“During times of crisis, we want to make sure this is taken very seriously and we do our due diligence,” Anderson told The Herald-News prior to the training. “We want to practice so we can make sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed so no mistakes happen in an actual emergency.”

Anderson said that a lot of the training comes down to “practicing discretion” to make sure families’ privacy is protected and nothing causes a panic.

Although the Wednesday practice was only for “key positions” on the EMA side, a real emergency would include many more first responders acting as escorts and guides.

Bowen said those situations are hard to practice because they are dependent on the conditions of the emergency and the size of the school or schools involved.

“The safety of our students and schools is a shared responsibility and a top priority of countywide emergency personnel,” Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant said in a statement. “Exercises like this help ensure we are ready to respond in a unified way to emergencies in a compassionate and effective manner.”