Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools work to make shooter drills less traumatic

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) - Learning how to react if a gunman enters a school and opens fire is terrifying, but a must for every student and school staff to learn.

Being prepared can also lead to children being paranoid if not done correctly. President Joe Biden wants to make training for this sad norm less traumatic.

The Kansas City, Kansas School District is working to follow the new research to do that. It’s all about making sure students are prepared without leaving them fearful.

KCK Public Schools Police Chief told KCTV since times have changed, how schools are secured need to change also.

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Tarik Khatib just took over leading the 36 officers of the KCK Public Schools Police Department two weeks ago.

“I’m very confident we have the capability to react,” Chief Khatib said. “But that’s not to say there’s improvements that need to be made.”

One of his top priorities is to keep officers proactive to any threats.

“Society changes and lots of times law enforcement is not part of the change,” Chief Khatib explained. “We’re just reacting to how things change.”

Chief Khatib welcomes the Federal Government to do more research and make changes to the training. So far, the evidence shows it’s more effective to train students to shelter in place.

“Shut the doors, turn the lights off, train the teachers and make people used to doing that,” Chief Khatib warned. “It can be more traumatizing for kids if we instead did full blown pretend active shooter drill.”

Parents also play a role in this. KCTV spoke to some in the KCK School District who explained on a daily basis, they remind their kids, to know where to hide, immediately text them, and stay there until help arrives.

Chief Khatib says that makes it better for them to respond.

“It sure makes it easier if people are in their rooms, secure,” Chief Khatib stated. “So that there’s fewer things for officers to pay attention to and they can go directly to where the gun shots are happening.”

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Another change, ensure students with disabilities and non-English speakers know what to do. Something KCK Public Schools believes they’re already on top of.

“We have a lot of bilingual officers, we also try to make it simple as possible with plaques in rooms with all these symbols and what they are,” Chief Khatib added. “We look at the symbol and people know what each symbol indicates and that makes it easier for people.”

Under President Biden’s Executive Order for all this, the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Surgeon General, have 110 days to comb through any research on what needs to change and how active shooter drills are more effective then report back with what school districts can do with that information.

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