By Ashley White
The Advocate
ACADIANA, La. — Districts across Acadiana have taken measures to physically make their campuses safer for students.
Local, state and district leaders worked through a fictional scenario on Thursday about what to do if those measures weren’t enough and an active shooter was able to make it onto a school campus.
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If someone wants to find a way, sometimes they do find a way, unfortunately, and if that is the case, we have to keep our kids safe,” said Greg Theriot, the regional superintendent for the Lafayette Charter Foundation.
“We have to have good emergency protocols to work with our personnel and we just need to be prepared.”
Leaders met at the Lafayette Emergency Operations Center to work through a scenario where an active shooter was on the campus of Acadiana Renaissance Academy, a charter school that serves ninth through 12th graders.
There were more than a dozen agencies represented at Thursday’s tabletop workshop, including Lafayette Consolidated Government, Ochsner and Lourdes hospitals, Acadian Ambulance and local first responders.
While working through the scenario, different “issues” would pop up, making the exercise feel more real and fluid.
“This allows us to take it to a level of coordination with all of our first responder agencies,” said Lafayette Mayor-President Monique Boulet. “It’s about getting people to know each other, to make eye-to-eye contact, exchange contact information, to know who’s going to be on the ground in that situation, so that it’s as seamless as possible to shut down the danger as fast as possible.”
It’s not the first exercise the agencies have worked through. They’ve also worked on natural disaster and mass casualty scenarios. Ultimately, the training is a moment for all agencies to see if there are any gaps in the plan, build cross-governmental relationships and ensure that all information is up to date.
“It’s not an easy exercise,” Boulet said. “It’s a lot of work, but, if we find ourselves in that situation, it will pay off. That’s the goal, to prevent any kind of danger.
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