In the multipurpose room of a Ford Heights school, teachers were practicing applying bright orange tourniquets on their arms and learning how to apply pressure on wounds to stanch the bleeding.
It was preparation for an event no schoolteacher or administrator wants to see happen — the possibility of an armed intruder entering the school and opening fire.
Members of the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Hostage Barricade Team, which is the county’s SWAT or emergency response unit, instructed teachers in Ford Heights Elementary District 169 about what to do should
“We’re not trying to scare anybody,” Sgt. Rich O’Brien, team co-commander, told teachers. “We’re trying to create a healthy awareness.”
The training at the district’s Cottage Grove Upper Grade Center also included teachers and staff from Medgar Evers Primary Academic Center.
While drills have been a part of school emergency preparedness for decades, prepping for the possibility of an active shooter situation can cause uneasiness, O’Brien said.
“It’s a tough topic,” O’Brien said. “We want to promote a healthy conversation among each other to make everybody safer.”
District Superintendent Gregory Jackson and Sharon Rivers, assistant superintendent and principal of Cottage Grove Upper Grade Center, said they want their schools to be ready for any type of emergency.
“As a former Scout leader I still ascribe to the Scout’s motto of always being prepared,” Jackson said.
Rivers said the district holds tornado drills, active shooter drills, lockdown drills and even an earthquake drill. O’Brien said he has been involved in active shooter and lockdown drills for a dozen years, and “you all are doing a great job.”
Teachers and staff are being given kits with bandages and tourniquets, and they will become part of an emergency “to go” bag all employees, down to food service workers and custodians, have at the ready if they must evacuate the school.
Rivers said they make sure everybody is involved in emergency preparedness.
The clear plastic backpacks include flashlights, water, small radios, rosters for a teacher’s classroom and a list of activities to keep children busy “in the event they have to relocate for an extended period,” Rivers said.
The hostage barricade officers used the “Stop the Bleed” curriculum for teacher training. It’s a course sheriff’s police offer at other school districts in the county. It’s the second year District 169 staff have received the instruction.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said, through the training, “the more people we can train will save immeasurable lives.”
“If these are going to be unfortunately inevitable, let’s give people the tools,” Dart said.
Anthony Schickel, a medic with the sheriff’s team, pointed out the top cause of preventable death after an injury is bleeding, and teachers were shown how to apply pressure on wounds and use tourniquets.
Training in the school and applying that training in a real-life emergency are two different things, and remaining calm in an emergency is key, he said. You have to control your emotions when administering emergency aid, he said.
In some classrooms, teachers works with very young students, where a tourniquet might not work on thin arms and legs, and applying pressure or packing a wound with gauze is necessary, Schickel said.
The instruction isn’t meant just for a school setting, and Schickel said “this training can be used anywhere,” including if someone is injured in their own home. Teachers were instructed on applying tourniquets to their own arms.
Sheriff’s police provide police services in Ford Heights, and the agency has assisted for several years in lockdown and active shooter drills in the district.
“We feel he has adopted our schools,” Jackson said of Dart. “He comes out personally to our schools.”
Dart said his office’s presence in the neighborhood, including the schools, is “how you build relationships.”
mnolan@tribpub.com
