Well-known and respected retired police officer Sean Ferns has been busy providing a safe place for students, parents and staff at Klamath Falls City Schools.
After retiring from the Klamath Falls Police Department after 27 years of police service, which included time at the Klamath County Sheriff’s Office, Ferns took a position as the KFCS Safety and Health Manager this past summer.
Ferns hit the ground running and recently spent time at Conger Elementary School and Pelican Elementary School to bring teachers and staff help in case if there were to be an active shooter on site.
Conger Elementary School Principal Sara Johnson, right, helps her students learn the school's after school pick-up procedure.
During a KFCS administrator retreat at Klamath Community College back in August, Ferns mentioned he would gladly visit each school to offer an active shooter training.
Ferns was adamant he would visit each school and encouraged district administrators to contact him if they elected to have a training at their school.
“We want to make sure things are up to par and make it a routine to inform our teachers what to do if this were to happen,” Ferns said. “I want to make this an annual training instead of having it be something which happens every six to 10 years.”
The training’s Ferns brought to Conger and Pelican are part of a program named ALICE Training. Ferns specifically trained teachers and support staff. No students were involved in the trainings.
The first part of the training was a classroom portion, and had teachers understand the type of alert they would receive if there was an active shooter, the transition of being in a lockdown, how to counter and an evacuation.
Pelican Elementary School instructor Christina Mark, left, teaching a class during the first week of school.
“We informed teachers how they can counter and when they should do it. In a lockdown scenario, we talked about being barricaded in, no matter what room you’re in,” Ferns said.
The next step will be a practical portion of the training where KFCS staff will learn about what to do if they are barricaded and how to defend themselves if there were to be an intruder inside their school.
There is not a date set for the practical portion but Ferns said there are plans for the training to occur sometime in October.
“This is an overall training I want to have at our schools yearly or twice a year, if possible. We want to see how we can do it better and how we can have the training again,” Ferns said. “For the practical portion, we will incorporate the intruder coming in and how to defend against them. Teachers will then go into action and inform their students on what they learned … it should be something which should be done beforehand to inform students and have them be aware.”