Boulder Elementary is moving forward with new school safety plans to ensure police access, expand training for teachers and staff and fully secure the building.
“A lot has happened since the last time we met, and one of the things that came to our attention is the safety of our school,” Principal Tyson Blaz said at the Oct. 12 school board meeting, seemingly referencing a September incident in which a student threatened to shoot their classmates, as reported by The Monitor.
Blaz said the school’s new eight-person safety committee, made up of teachers and staff and set to meet for the third time on Wednesday, planned to provide the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office with school access fobs.
Since the gun threat incident, the school hired Montana Safe Schools, a Missoula-based organization that promotes school safety, to perform a school safety assessment, which found a few areas of need, such as ineffective door locks. In addition, Boulder Elementary hopes to train faculty and staff in ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate), a respected national training program for active shooter response.
“A big goal of mine is making sure we’re safe, making sure our students are safe, making sure our teachers feel safe in the school,” said Blaz.
On top of the added training, Boulder Elementary already implements the behavioral management tool CHAMPS, meaning Conversation, Help, Activity, Movement, Participation and Success. The Institute of Education Science has found CHAMPS to be highly successful, often creating a more organized, positive and productive learning environment.
The program has helped “create more consistency at the school” on the behavior management front, according to Blaz.
In tandem, Boulder Elementary also has another behavioral management program through the state-run Montana Behavioral Initiative, which guides students to be safe, respectful, responsible and positive.
“The biggest priority is creating a safe environment for learners,” Blaz said. “If you feel threatened you don’t have the ability to learn as much as you can.”
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