LRHSD addresses safety
Lenape Regional High School District recently held a two-day emergency planning course, designed by FEMA and hosted by the state police, to prepare the schools to handle emergency situations.
“Back in the fall after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, of course we did what we could to put everything in place for school shootings,” said Carol Birnbohm, superintendent of schools during the April 17 meeting. “We didn’t want to just train for a school crisis with just a school shooting in mind. We wanted to look at everything in a school setting.”
Medford Township Emergency Management Coordinator Lt. Jeffrey Wagner of the township police department brought the program to the attention of Birnbohm.
The training program is implemented nationally and presented by FEMA. Normally, the actual training is hosted in Maryland, but in this case, it was brought to the district.
All eight sending districts’ representatives, resource officers from Cherokee, Shawnee, Lenape and Seneca, fire, EMS, state police, buildings and grounds, transportation and security, and emergency management coordinator James Kehoe were in attendance. Additionally, police from Evesham and Medford townships attended the training.
“We immediately made sure we had procedures in place to address incidents similar to last fall’s events, but we also put some distance between those incidents and took a look at the big picture in emergency planning and response,” Kehoe said in a statement. “This was a rare chance for all attendees from different agencies who respond to school emergencies to sit down and discuss procedures and strategies to handle a wide range of hazards and threats that may affect our schools.”
According to Birnbohm, LRHSD has many of the practices already in place.
Sgt. William Craney of the State Police Emergency Management Section South Region said in a statement that the core of the program is to establish a standardized method for schools to develop customized emergency operations plans that adhere to a national standard.
“LRHSD already has a comprehensive plan in place, and by training with key emergency responders, they are well on their way to improving their response to all school hazards. A lot of the best practices are already in use in the current Lenape Regional High School District Crisis Plan,” Craney said.
In other news:
• Four Lenape students, seniors Sarita Jamil and Elena Malloy, junior Anna Wechsler and sophomore Dragan Vujovic, led by adviser Kim Murray-Condurso, were honored for capturing the Deborah Heart Challenge title for the eighth consecutive year.
Lenape has won nine out of 15 Deborah Heart Challenge competitions.
Students were tested on the heart, lungs and vascular system in addition to a rapid fire of questions in a game show atmosphere for a panel of doctors.
“To somewhat combat the ‘Lenape effect,’ we added more penalty points to the last round and added all new questions so they could not study old questions,” said Tom Campbell, director of marketing and public relations at Deborah.
“Their knowledge of the material greatly impressed our panel of physicians.”
• The board also approved the Lenape/Cherokee Storm Robotics Team’s request for 30 students and chaperones to travel to St. Louis to attend the First Championship.
The next board of education meeting is scheduled for May 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the District Administration Building located at 93 Willow Grove Road in Shamong.
