Du Quoin school board: How can we prepare for an active shooter?

With the country's newest mass school shooting still fresh, and two weeks after a scare of its own, the Du Quoin school board discussed active shooter preparations during its meeting on Thursday.

Community member Marti Rider spoke during public comment on concerns she had regarding students possibly freezing out of fear during an incident and asked to "open up dialogue" on how students are to respond during an active shooter situation.

Superintendent Gary Kelly said most active school shooters are students and "trigger drills" are state mandated with law enforcement and fire department personnel.

He stated that certain tactics can't be discussed with students as that would make a potential shooter aware of what the response plan would be to a threat.

"Are there certain things we can talk about? Of course," Kelly said.

Kelly said discussions regarding student well-being, social media use and mental health aspects can be held.

"I certainly want to share that I have faith in everybody at the sheriff's office," Rider said.

Kelly said one upcoming change will be that Illinois State Police troopers will start coming to schools and conducting walk-throughs and checking in.

Du Quoin Elementary School Principal Diana Rea acknowledged the "scare in our community," and board member Paul Brock said the media are partly to blame due to their extensive coverage of incidents.

Rider said she does not know and does not want to know who is the juvenile student allegedly connected to Du Quoin's social media threat that was made publicly known on Feb. 4.

A 17-year-old Du Quoin High School student was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in alleged connection to a social media post that referenced the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and was being interpreted as a threat to the district's schools.

"I hope there's help, not just discipline," Rider said.

The only other topic that garnered significant discussion was the district's website, which Kelly said the district is paying $6,000 a year to an outside company to host and maintain.

Board member Karen Williams questioned why the district is paying for the website when it has an IT person in-house and said the current website is not user friendly.

Kelly said he is looking into a different program that would combine the district website, social media accounts and call system into one system and wondered if the IT person, who wasn't named, had the necessary expertise to be able to set it up and maintain it.

"See if he's capable of doing it and if he can, I don't see why we're paying an outside entity," said Board President Mark Woodside.

PRINCIPALS' REPORTS

In her report to the board, Rea spoke on students from the school's Talented And Gifted (TAG) program recently bringing home trophies at a Team Quest event. Both of DES's third grade and fourth grade teams qualified for the regional competition in April.

Other topics she highlighted was the 100th day of school, the school's "one school, one book" program and the upcoming ILLINOIS READS Festival on March 10.

"You all have a lot of reading to do to catch up as we've been reading for a couple weeks," Rea said as she passed out copies of "The Wild Robot" to the board members.

In his report to the board, Du Quoin Middle School Principal Aaron Hill highlighted the school's girls basketball team winning its regional and advancing to the SIJHSAA Class L state tournament and an attendance competition among the school's homerooms.

"We're wanting to do something special for the homeroom with the best attendance," he said, noting that the winning homeroom in January got Krispy Kreme donuts.

In his report to the board, Du Quoin High School Principal Matt Hickam said his school's PARCC scores for 2016 have finally come in and students had a 53.8 percent proficiency rating in Biology.

The state average was 40.8 percent.

"We are pretty proud they're above the state average and have the highest proficiency of the SIRR schools," he said.

Hickam also highlighted Paxton Higgerson becoming the school's first sectional champion in swimming. Higgerson will compete at the IHSA state swim meet this weekend in Evanston.

ROUNDUP

Du Quoin Education Association representative Jean Ann Mathis said the DEA is picking out dates to begin contract negotiations with the district, in the hopes a deal can be worked out by mid-April.

"We're hoping to get the contract done in four days," she said.

During a discussion of this year's Arrow Academy program, Rea said an instructional program will be held June 4 through June 29 for elementary and middle school students in the areas of reading and math. She noted that she has 133 students enrolled in the program as of the meeting.

Kelly spoke on updating the district's strategic plan, which hasn't been updated since 2014. A committee consisting of school board members, faculty, staff, administration, students and community members will be reviewing and updating the plan starting in March.

Kelly also highlighted options for the 2018-19 school calendar as developed by the DEA calendar committee. Formal approval of next school year's calendar will occur in March.

The board approved Kelly to begin budget preparations for next year's budget. The posting of the budget hearing notice for September 2018 was also approved.

The board approved employing Robin Yancey as DMS 5th grade math teacher for the 2018-19 school year.

The board approved employing Bailie Caldwell as DHS assistant softball coach and Paul Miller as DMS assistant volleyball coach.