New Durham School District Reunification Drill at DSAC Westville

Campus members, at noon this Friday, March 10, 2023, we will be hosting The New Durham School District reunification drill at the Dworkin Student Service and Activities Complex.

The New Durham School district reached out to PNW Public Safety prior to the pandemic about using PNW Westville DSAC as a reunification site in case of a disaster scenario (tornado, active shooter etc.) in Westville schools.

We met with the school officials and came up with a unification plan in which the children would be bused over to the DSAC and held until the parents could come and pick them up.  PNW would provide space at the DSAC, police to keep all safe and other staff to keep the 1000 students comfortable until released.

After revisiting this plan, we will now test it out in a reunification drill. We will not be using children in the drill, but all teachers and staff from New Durham will come to the DSAC and go through the motions of reunifying children with their parents.

The drill will start with the New Durham School District contacting our police dispatch in West Lafayette and asking PNW to set up a reunification site for them. Buses will be coming to our campus (again no students will participate), and we will make the drill as realistic as possible. Superintendent Wood will bring some evaluators to the drill from another school district so they can grade “New Durham” on their processes.

Obviously, we hope that this is a good plan that never gets utilized, but it helps to be prepared.

Regards,

Brian Miller
Director of Public Safety