Effective leadership
and parent involvement
ensure preparedness for
the unthinkable
An on-campus
shooting that took
two lives tested the
professionalism and
resilience of an entire
school and district
team in carrying out
the safety drills and
evacuation techniques
they had rehearsed
countless times.
16
Leadership
North Park Elementary sits in
the heart of San Bernardino, a community
that pulled together following a Dec. 2,
2015 terrorist attack; a community that is
no stranger to violence, tragedy and natural
disasters. The San Bernardino City Unified
School District is adjacent to the San Ber-
nardino Mountains, where wildland fires
shut down the district in 2003 and 2007,
and where the San Andreas Fault extends
silently underground.
In the middle of Monday morning, April
10, 2017, SBCUSD faced a crisis no school
district wants to face: an on-campus shoot-
ing. North Park Elementary School and its
523 students and 38 teachers and staff car-
ried out the safety drills they had rehearsed
countless times. However, this was no drill.
Keeping everyone safe and calm was no easy
task. And, thanks to the professionalism
and resilience of the North Park team, the
entire school was evacuated within minutes,
under the watchful eyes of San Bernardino
School Police and law enforcement partners.
Dozens of media outlets, including major
Los Angeles news crews, were on scene
nearly as quickly as the medevac helicop-
ter that transported 8-year-old Jonathan
Martinez to Loma Linda University Hos-
pital, where attempts to save his life were
unsuccessful. As the story unfolded live on
television and online, parents across San
Bernardino scrambled to find out if their
children were safe.
The San Bernardino City Unified School
District has invested in building a strong
Communications Department. However,
in the age of instant electronic communica-
tion, the department staff had to work fever-
ishly to keep up with the news media and
the Twitterverse, where rumors spread faster
than facts can be gathered.
As the district worked to gather facts and
quickly share verified information with par-
ents and employees via social media, auto-
mated phone calls and emails, it was faced
with a multitude of challenges. One chal-
lenge faced on the day of the shooting was
the need to make sure the parents of the two
students who were shot were notified first.
In such a delicate situation, there is no room
for error, so anxious parents had to wait it
By Linda Bardere and Maria Garcia