News

On Monday, Sioux City Community School District staff were trained on what to do in the event of a crisis.

Chad Sheehan is a former Sioux City police officer and the creator of the S.A.V.E training which stands for shelter in place, awareness, violence stops violence and evacuate.

The goal of the program is to increase your chances of survival.

Sheehan says, “I try to make people understand how the simple steps actually effectively make you a harder victim.”

Steps for teachers include leading during a crisis, setting up barriers to block the door in the event of an intruder, spreading out kids, and even throwing items such as textbooks as a distraction.

“Seconds are the difference between living and dying in these types of situations and so if we have people that are already kind of trained on what to do they take those actions those split seconds may save kids lives”, says Sheehan.

About 2,000 Sioux City staff members sat through the training and they will eventually teach students what to do in the event of a crisis.

Superintendent of Sioux City schools Dr. Paul Gausman says, “We’re trying to be very purposeful very proactive about training our staff to think through very negative and unfortunate situations so they’re well prepared to serve our students.”

This training comes right out of a request from teacher’s who wanted to learn more about how to keep themselves and their students safe.