Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. The safety, security, and wellbeing of all students and staff in Jordan School District is our top priority. On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with the District's Emergency Operations Manager to find out more about on-going efforts to enhance safety measures in our schools and buildings. Also, find out how a strong relationship with local law enforcement agencies along with having School Resource Officers assigned to every school is helping to reinforce our safety and security measures.

We're here with Emergency Operations Manager, Lance Everill. Lance, thanks for taking the time.

Lance Everill:
My pleasure.

Anthony Godfrey:
I've worked with you for a long time and your team is on the cutting edge of making our schools as safe as possible. You're quick to respond when we do have a concern and you guys just, I can't imagine anyone doing a better job, so I really appreciate everything that you do.

Lance Everill:
That's nice. Thank you very much.

Anthony Godfrey:
I'm glad that we can sit down for a few minutes and talk about some of the things we've been doing as a district over the years to make sure our schools are as safe as possible. And I think we've done a lot of things to move forward in that direction. Some things that may have been forgotten over the years, or may not be noticed anymore because they've been around for so long. One of those things is name badges. Name badges started a long time ago, and it's a small thing, but it makes a big difference. You can spot who works in Jordan School District or in a school from a very long distance, because they're wearing their name badge. Right?

Lance Everill:
Yeah. And that becomes a natural filter. What you'll hear is that it makes it an easy way to identify from a distance who is an employee and who's potentially a visitor. And so when you have some of those simple filters, it helps staff with looking at who's in the building. But it also just as importantly, helps students, parents, guardians and visitors know who do I go to for help.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's right. I also like when people forget to take their badges off and they wear them in a restaurant or a store into the wild and I am able to go up and talk to some district employees after hours who maybe are still wearing the badge. There are some other things that we've done over the years. And one of those is an audit. There's a regular audit of every school to be sure that they are compliant with the plans that we have in place for each school to make sure that they are safe. There are some small tasks, some small things that need to be maintained to be sure the building is safe. What I love about that is ever since it was put in place, I think in 2013. So it's been a long time now, that we all get an email. Everyone at the cabinet level in the administration gets an email about every school. So we have a clear sense for where the patterns are. Now scores have soared over the years on those audits, it's brought attention to the things that needed to be done. And I think we have consistently had high scores in all of our buildings, right?

Lance Everill:
Yeah. We implemented it in February of 2013 and it's a pretty rigorous asses