Hundreds of people participated in a mass casualty exercise hosted by the Birdville ISD leadership team.
NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, Texas — Before school starts back this year emergency responders and educators in North Texas are learning life-saving skills. They participated in active shooter training based on what they have seen happen too often in real life.
Dr. Gayle Stinson became the Birdville ISD superintendent in 2021. This coming school year, her goal is to prepare for the worse just in case. The parents of nearly 23,000 students are counting on her team to keep them safe. So, active shooter training is vital.
The training is more like real life after the team watched the October 2021 shooting at Mansfield Timberview High School.
“In the case that there is an issue, we want to be prepared,” Dr. Gayle Stinson said. “Our team followed that in real-time. Dr. Showell was able to gather us at the command center and prep us as we were watching it unfold.”
The scenarios unfolded under the leadership of North Richland Hills Police Chief Mike Young. It comes easy because of his firsthand experiences in Uvalde after the deadly school mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Young is hosting 350 to 400 people for the exercise at Richland High School.
“I got to see firsthand a lot of the trials and tribulations and the hurt that it did to that community,” Young said.
The training exercise included entering the school immediately. Then, emergency responders escorted the students to safety. They used fake blood to help identify and get the injured outside and transported to the hospital.
Organizers also staged student actors inside the school to report gunfire and other critical information that often happens in real-life situations. The school district’s public information officer even set up a fake social media account to use for disseminating information to parents and media outlets.
During the scenario, firefighters played a critical role in giving medical attention to injured students and teachers.
Fire Chief Stan Tinney said, “It gives us that life experience that we wouldn’t have any other way that we learn from. And should an event like this actually happen, we’re much, much better prepared for it.”
Tinney and his firefighters also received mutual aid as part of the training like the Bedford Fire Department, one of 32 agencies participating. They too will have takeaways like the administrators and counselors recruited by the school district leaders to play the role of wounded students.
Dr. Joseph Showell serves as the Birdville ISD executive director. A large part of his job involves student services.
“We want to have that takeaway be even greater,” said Showell. “So what we plan to do is an after-action with the participants.”
Showell plans to take what they learn from the active shooting training and expand on how they can make the school district even safer for teachers and students. The same goes for the participants and observers from around North Texas.
“Today is about taking that information, digesting it, and learning from it so that we can be as prepared as possible for something that we hope never happens,” Stinson said.