It’s a nightmare scenario and one that was practiced Tuesday in Butler County in the largest active shooter drill done in southwest Ohio, said officials.
More than 250 participants, including local police and county sheriff deputies, emergency medical teams, school security personnel, school staffers and volunteer adults and students from a variety of area districts, scrambled around the Ross Middle and High School campus during the security exercise.
The drill was the latest and most visible effort by Butler County schools, police and other first responders to better prepare to counter an armed attack like those seen last year in Florida and Texas high schools that left dozens dead.
“It was pretty intense,” said Ross Board of Education member Amy Webb.
Webb and other board members didn’t know all the details of the active shooter scenario to better lend authenticity to the drill. So when a plain clothes police officer playing the role of the active shooter came into the mock board meeting in the school’s media center, they were sincerely surprised by his taking a hostage.
“I’m a little shaken,” said Webb afterwards. “It’s surreal.”
The fictional event was arranged to represent a typical school day of events that would happen in the first month of the school year and included students from other districts representing sports teams that would be playing or practicing at the time of the attack.
The drill in the rural Butler County school system also included dozens of participating officials, including superintendents and public information officers, from school districts across the county, who used the shooting training to practice communicating the news of the drill via social media to the public to reduce panic and rumors.
Ross Superintendent Scott Gates said the event was unnerving at times but necessary to better prepare counter measures for an armed attack on a school campus.
“We share information not only with other districts but first responders,” Gates said. “There are multiple activities going on not only in this building but across the campus so the goal is how do we communicate internally that something is going on this campus and then communicate externally with other districts so they communicate effectively and with facts.”
Butler County school districts have been among the state leaders in addressing school security issues.
In 2016, nearby Madison schools saw an armed student wound four classmates in a shooting, but years before that Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones had drawn national attention with his campaign to arm trained school staffers to better protect students.
And last school year, Madison became the first district in southwest Ohio to arm and allow access to handguns to teachers who volunteer and were trained in handling the weapons.
Last fall, five Butler County districts – Hamilton, Fairfield, Monroe, Edgewood and New Miami – were among the first in Ohio to join together in asking residents in their districts to vote for a school security tax hike that would have gone largely to adding more armed school resource officers and security technology to their buildings.
But voters overwhelmingly defeated the proposed school tax.
Shawn Riley, administrator of school safety for Hamilton County Educational Services Center, helped Butler County educational service officials coordinate the drill and said he believes the active shooter exercise was the largest ever tried in southwest Ohio.
“This is a fairly unique exercise,” said Riley. “And from what I could see I think it went well.”
Webb said afterward that “I’m glad that we are doing this training with the kids but at the same I wish it was something we didn’t have to plan for or prepare for.
“It’s scary. Until you actually go through the drill like we went through today, it doesn’t really hits home on how scary something like this is.”
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