Having come from Colorado, a state on the leading edge of dealing with school violence, improving school safety was already a priority when Kym LeBlanc-Esparza took over as Newberg School District superintendent last summer.

She and new assistant superintendent Dave Parker were in the process of building relationships with the local police and fire departments, so the timing was right to collaborate on crisis management, especially because the district hadn’t examined the issue in a few years.

But after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School shook the nation and a false report about a gunman at a Newberg elementary school, called in by a student to 9-1-1, elicited lockdowns at several buildings Jan. 29, the issue became much more pressing and officials on all sides have been working steadily ever since.

 “The idea and the attention came to this before these events occurred, but those events occurring did influence the timing and the priority given to it,” Newberg-Dundee Police Capt. Chris Bolek said. “It showed we should move on this sooner rather than later.”

Coincidentally, it was on LeBlanc-Esparza’s first day in her new position that the Engels tragedy, which saw Randall Engel shoot and kill his estranged wife and two children before committing suicide, rocked the community.

Having worked with a former member of the Columbine SWAT team to review school safety plans in her former district in Colorado before taking the position in Newberg, questions about how the local district were already lingering in her mind when she arrived in town.

“Then when the Sandy Hook piece hit, I think it really brought it to the surface,” LeBlanc-Esparza said. “Everybody went ‘We’ve just got to be prepared on a moment’s notice to respond so that we give ourselves the best opportunity to be successful.’

Along with her experience, LeBlanc-Esparza tapped into resources like the I Love You Guys Foundation, which provided a crisis response manual template, which she charged Parker with adapting to fit Newberg’s needs.

Take into account the willingness of Police Chief Brian Casey and Fire Marshall Chris Mayfield to collaborate and the process has been a relatively smooth one, laying the foundation for a mutually-beneficial relationship between the agencies moving forward.

“I appreciate the fact that they are always willing to come to the table and review what’s going on to see if there’s anything we can do better,” LeBlanc-Esparza said. “Together as a team, that’s huge.”

The focus of the effort has been to create a crisis response plan that can be used at every building in the district, with a special emphasis on training staff and students how to react and stay out of the way of first responders in various emergency situations.

“You just can’t have a different plan for every single school,” LeBlanc-Esparza said. “It doesn’t make sense and really puts people like police and fire at a disadvantage because they have their training on how to deal with emergencies and we have to make sure we know how to support them in doing that because that’s going to help everyone be safer.”

The key, she said, is consistency as lockdown and fire drills which police and fire department officials participating have taken place across the district. LeBlanc-Esparza added that additional training for first responders will be done this summer so that they can better familiarize themselves with district buildings while they are unoccupied. School district staff will also be trained on the new protocol before the next school year begins in the fall.

Newberg’s efforts may prove be on the forefront of the issue in this area, and perhaps the state, as officials from other districts have asked to borrow the plan they are creating to guide their own work.

"I’ve gotten phone calls from a handful, like six or seven, superintendents in districts in our area that want to borrow our template for a crisis plan because they don’t have one and rather than start from scratch,”   LeBlanc-Esparza said. “They’ve said they heard ours was good and they’d like to use it. I’m proud of the work that the team here has done because it really has been sort of a leadership piece in our area.”

By Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic