School shootings are becoming unnervingly routine in this country.
So preparing educators and law enforcement officers to respond to those potentially dangerous situations has become a necessary job requirement.
But finding places to get those skills specifically geared to school settings weren’t readily available in Pennsylvania – until now with the soon-to-open Pennsylvania School Safety Institute.
This new center will open its 5,000-square-foot facility at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association building in Silver Spring Township in Cumberland County at noon Monday. Guided tours of the facility will be offered.
The institute, believed to be the first of its kind in the state, is set to begin offering classroom training and hands-on simulations beginning in July. The institute is a nonprofit corporation created through funding from the PSBA Trust, which provides insurance policies designed for schools.
Using a 360-degree, eight-room simulator, trainees are immersed in an interactive experience complete with special effects where they face any one of more than 1,000 different scenarios – from disruptive students to disgruntled employees, to outsiders’ intent on causing harm.
With the technology on site, staff can adjust the outcome of each scenario in up to 50 different ways based on the trainee’s interaction with the actor on the screen including situations where simulated weapons, such as pepper spray and assault-style weapons are used.
Nathan Mains, CEO of the school boards association, said the idea for opening the institute grew out of conversations about how firefighters have training centers but there was nothing beyond tabletop exercises and an occasional Saturday morning drill at a school involving law enforcement to practice responses to school security threats.
“Don’t we need the teams of people that would ultimately be responsible for school safety to be practicing individually and together as cross functional teams of administrators, teachers, school resource officers, local police, state police, security officers?” Mains said.
Citing incidents like last May’s mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas and the March school shooting in Nashville that left six people dead, Mains said, “It could – and probably at some point unfortunately will –happen here.”
As they mulled those thoughts about where school personnel and law enforcement could go to practice threat-response skills, he said, “the answer came back there’s nothing here but there is an ability to have a center if we created a place where practice could occur.”
Pulling together the expertise of a team of PSBA staff including among others, its chief impact officer Britta Barrickman and former Lancaster police officer Michael Deitz, in January they began creating the institute in repurposed space inside PSBA’s building.
The institute provides trainees receive real-time feedback on their reaction to different scenarios with opportunities to get do-overs to try different responses that may achieve a different outcome. Additionally, the institute provides trainees with information about case law to guide appropriate action in handling situations.
The simulations can be hair-raising like one involving a heated exchange between a school resource officer (played by Deitz) and an on-screen actor playing the role of a parent who wasn’t authorized to take his child out of school. The scene grew increasingly tense as Deitz who maintained a calm demeanor tried to talk the agitated parent into leaving. The father refused and pulled a gun out of the back of his waistband, aiming it at the officer. Deitz, after making repeated requests asking him to put down the gun, saw the parent prepare to pull the trigger. Deitz fired off several shots and the actor on the screen dropped to the floor.
Former state Rep. Frank Ryan, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, came away from a visit to the training center with a renewed appreciation for law enforcement. He also participated in a series of heart-pumping lifelike simulations, two of which he said left him a dead man and shooting at others around the person who intended him harm. He called it a powerful learning experience.
“I’ve been through simulators before in the Marine Corps and they’ve been well done but nothing compares to what I saw there,” he said. “It is beyond state of the art and realistic. I’m going to guarantee you this simulator will save lives.”
Mechanicsburg Area School District Superintendent Mark Leidy, who serves on the institute’s board of advisors, said the “experience is something every school administrator should have.” Silver Spring Township Police Chief Christopher Raubenstine, another member of the board of advisors, said he sees it as providing law enforcement officers with “a clear advantage in preparing for potential safety and security concerns.”
A fee will be charged for the use of the institute’s training facility but PSBA spokeswoman Mackenzie Christiana said the goal is to ensure it is not cost prohibitive.
Mains said he hopes every school district takes advantage of this training opportunity as soon as possible and uses it to foster deeper conversations with law enforcement and other community partners to prepare for scenarios that can put the lives of students and staff at risk.
He admits offering training such as this to respond to security threats in school settings is a service he never imagined having to provide.
“It’s a really sad statement on the fact that we’ve gone down this path and had to offer it,” Mains said. “But it’s necessary.”
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
