Radford City Schools

8 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 teachers, parents, and students, alike. The district has already applied some grant monies to improve school-door security and has added video cameras to its buildings. It has also partnered with the “I Love U Guys Foundation,” a non-profit organization that provides programs for crisis response and post-crisis reunification used in more than 45,000 schools, districts, departments, agencies, organizations, and communities around the world. “We trained all of our employees under the ‘I Love U Guys’ standard emergency protocols and have told the parents what all of those protocols mean,” Denny reports. “The training gave us a more consistent, common language. We’ll use that language when we have alerts this year. We have outfitted all the schools with all the visuals; we used a security grant to make all the posters, flyers, and flip books – everything that a teacher would need in the middle of an emergency. The next step is to outfit classrooms with emergency kits to use in the event of a full lockdown, especially if it’s a long-term full lockdown. Also, this spring, we’ll be looking at taking steps toward creating a better reunification system. We have a great partnership with our police department, and we now have a school resource officer at every school. It’s money that we put toward something that we hope we never have to use. But the reality is we have to be prepared.” Goals for the future Going forward, the three school representatives outline their priorities: “Safety is always our top priority,” says Wilder. “We are always, every year, and within the year, revamping our security and taking a closer look at that. Instructionally,