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Incidents Put Schools’ Emergency Plans To A Test

Marny Lombard And Brian Coddington S Staff writer

Two Spokane Valley schools emerged safely from potential crises in the last 10 days.

Emergency plans at University High School and North Pines Junior High worked well. The high school evacuated its students and sent them home this week after a bomb threat. Last week, the junior high locked its classrooms in order to isolate an unruly student.

School officials say lessons were learned from both events - without injury, panic or loss of property.

Among those lessons: School officials have to search their own buildings for a bomb.

“I was a bit surprised by that myself,” said Central Valley School District Superintendent Wally Stanley.

The regional bomb squad’s policy applies to all bomb threats.

“If they do find something we will go out. We generally will not go look for a bomb,” said Spokane County Sheriff’s Lt. Danny O’Dell. He is in charge of the bomb squad. The policy is partly a matter of manpower and partly a sense that people who work in a building will have a better idea than deputies of what does and doesn’t belong in a classroom.

At 12:20 p.m. Monday, U-Hi’s secretary received the bomb threat over the phone. The caller sounded like a young man. Students and teachers were evacuated from the building and then sent home. Administrators and custodians searched the building but found nothing.

A couple of glitches showed up during the afternoon.

First, once officials decided to send kids home, U-Hi principal Erik Ohlund had no simple way to communicate that.

“I think we learned a little bit,” he said later in the week. “I need a bullhorn. We had students literally on three sides of our campus.”

Stanley said officials are looking at a better way to gather U-Hi students once they’re outside.

Then, there was the bookbag problem.

Because students exited the building in response to a fire alarm, they left behind their books.

For safety and security reasons, the building stayed locked. Officials and custodians ferried hundreds of book bags to the front door.

“We literally ran a delivery service,” Ohlund said. It took all afternoon and into the evening.

Last Wednesday at North Pines Junior High, a hostile student prompted North Pines principal Dave Bouge to call for an emergency lock-down of the school.

It was the first time this emergency plan has been used. “I rewrote it the Sunday after Moses Lake,” Bouge said, referring to last month’s fatal shootings at a junior high school.

At North Pines, a student lost his temper and pushed his teacher. The boy has a history of behavior problems, said Bouge. Two male aides are assigned to his class partly to keep an eye on him.

The aides and Bouge subdued the youth and “talked him down,” the principal said. Eventually the boy fled through a window. The classroom was on ground level.

In previous instances, the boy has left and simply gone home. This time, he came back inside.

“I got the call from the secretary and hustled back upstairs. I could see by the expression on his face that he was off again,” Bouge said.

With a class change only a few minutes away, Bouge decided he didn’t want the youth mixing with other students.

He called a “Code Red,” the name for the school’s emergency lock-down plan. Every teacher got word to lock his or her classroom with students inside.

Eventually, the student was taken into custody.

Bouge said the only glitch was that students in classrooms overlooking the main entrance gawked through their windows as the three sheriff’s cars pulled up.

Code Red policy calls for all classroom windows to stay covered.

“I don’t want these things to turn into a circus. I don’t want the students to even know what student is involved,” he said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BOMB THREAT BOMBED OUT Some bomb threats have, if not a happy ending, a funny one. West Valley Superintendent Dave Smith told this story: A bomb threat was called in to Spokane Valley High School, a regional alternative school administered by West Valley. Principal Doug Grace took the call. The caller was young; Grace was able to keep him on the line. Grace also managed, Smith said, to get his secretary to call the police and start tracing the call. Grace kept talking and actually coaxed the youth into agreeing to enroll at the high school. Finally, the kid said, “Just a minute, there’s someone outside.” Grace hung on. It was the police, knocking at the young man’s door.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BOMB THREAT BOMBED OUT Some bomb threats have, if not a happy ending, a funny one. West Valley Superintendent Dave Smith told this story: A bomb threat was called in to Spokane Valley High School, a regional alternative school administered by West Valley. Principal Doug Grace took the call. The caller was young; Grace was able to keep him on the line. Grace also managed, Smith said, to get his secretary to call the police and start tracing the call. Grace kept talking and actually coaxed the youth into agreeing to enroll at the high school. Finally, the kid said, “Just a minute, there’s someone outside.” Grace hung on. It was the police, knocking at the young man’s door.