Practice Makes Perfect
New plans, policies and systems are only useful insofar as employees understand them. Wren has several methods of ensuring district employees are familiar with his initiatives. He has employed concepts from FEMA’s Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS) to develop effective table top drills for administrators.
The district conducts four tabletop exercises a year and a “First Five” policy mandates that employees spend at least the first five minutes of every school administration meeting on a specially tailored safety lesson or exercise. Wren personally conducts group training for custodial staff members, bus drivers and nurses. Teachers represent a bigger group, so Wren partnered with Safe Havens International to develop training videos and a course that teachers take online.
“I’m constantly working to improve how we drill. We’ll have schools pull the alarm at odd times of the day, or we’ll pull a kid from a teacher and see if the teacher reports the missing student properly,” Wren says. “When I’m reading drill reflection forms, it should never say ‘Everything went well.’ That just means you didn’t throw enough curveballs. We should be learning something every time.”
Eventually, Wren wants to develop a school assessment program within the district that certifies schools for completing certain drills and rewards them.
Versatility Pays Off
Cox thinks every district in the country should have someone like Wren, who he describes as one of the most ethical people he knows. Tight budgets shouldn’t be an excuse, Cox says.
“You should be able to find funds at the state and district level,” Cox explains. “Because the costs of failure are astronomical, so you really can’t afford not to have a campus safety director like Kevin. You can always realign resources, and a decrease in accidents will also help pay for it.”
Cox suggested districts talk to local police about providing crossing guards and negotiate lower insurance premiums to open up money.
Meanwhile, Wren’s ability to excel in different situations continues to pay off. When a video of a school resource officer throwing and dragging a student went viral from Richland, South Carolina, Wren worked with Rock Hill’s communications director on a campaign of positive information and even wrote a news article that garnered considerable attention on the subject.
Wren is also working with state legislators on a school safety committee subgroup, presenting facts on school security and representing security managers across the state.
“Kevin has made it a point to be versatile, whether it’s emergency management, behavioral intervention with students, OSHA safety,” Cox says. “He’s just as likely to be talking to state legislators as he is to be talking with a student who’s exhibiting concerning behavior.”
Wren, though, is quick to defer credit to other individuals who have helped him along the way, including his community.
“I’ve got a school board who wanted security improvements and a community that passed a $110 million bond referendum to thank,” Wren says.
Other security managers have support, but Wren’s passion for helping students is what makes him stand out. On top of his regular duties, Wren is constantly prodding the facilities workers to improve the playgrounds as part of his goal to make Rock Hill campuses the safest in the state.
Wren also coaches a middle school soccer team, although the games don’t quite attract the same crowd as the football games. I guess you can’t change everything in Rock Hill.
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