With the recent events at Uvalde, the safety and security of students and staff are at the forefront of everyone’s thinking. Over the course of the summer members of the White Oak ISD Safety & Security Team, along with WOPD and other first responders, met to discuss our current safety plans and best practices. Through those discussions and research, many updates were made and implemented. A few of those are denoted below:
- Hiring the first School Resource Officer in the history of WOISD. When you get a chance, say hello to officer Robbie Benson. Officer Benson will be in-district every day that school is in session. He will office between the HS and MS campuses.
- Established a White Oak ISD Guardian Team. These are select, trained, and armed staff members that will be tasked with immediately responding to any threat, along with our SRO, within our district.
- Established training dates with WO Security team members and WOPD along with tabletop exercises and facility walk-throughs.
- Updated our current EOP and incorporated the Homeland Security Run-Hide-Fight protocols and training for ALL STAFF and STUDENTS (in an age-appropriate fashion) with appropriate drills.
- Updated our Handheld Digital Radios so that we have IMMEDIATE first-person communication with WOPD and responding officers in the event of an emergency.
- Completed a Safety Audit of ALL Facilities.
- Developed an Exterior Door Safety Audit Tracking Tool so that we can monitor ALL exterior doors for function and maintain these in a locked, secure fashion 24-7.
- A Safety and Security Grant has been written and submitted for an additional $500,000 for security cameras.
- Window tinting at various locations
- Various other strategic and logistic updates.
While it is our goal to provide the best possible education for our students, we want to do this in a fashion that is safe and secure. We appreciate the support of the White Oak community and the City of White Oak in these endeavors.
Go Roughnecks!