Nov 14, 2024

Board getting closer to passing emergency plan for Hoisington schools

Posted Nov 14, 2024 4:00 PM

By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post

USD 431 Hoisington continues to work on its emergency plan. Superintendent Patrick Crowdis provided updates during Monday's Board of Education meeting. The district's current emergency plan was put through a rubric when administrators attended ESSDACK meetings about plans.

"Ours did not score well," Crowdis said. "It was very basic, very bare-bones. It's still pretty basic but it's simple to look at and find what we need. To me, that's really important because if it's 45 pages long and every inch is covered in words, then when we are in an emergency, it's going to be much more difficult to use."

Administrators plan to meet with building emergency staff to create at a revised plan before coming back to the board with a final draft for approval. Crowdis is hoping to take action as soon as December.

"We will go into executive session," he said. "This is not necessarily public information. We don't want to share everything. Our students, especially the high school students, I know are very versed in many aspects of the emergency plan as we go through drills and different things like that, but that's not something we want to put out 100 percent publicly just to protect our students."

The district continues to look into emergency management systems that will help with notifications during an event. Crowdis said any system acquired by the district would add to the approved emergency plan, not replace part of it.