Following the National tragedy, school districts all around Northern Michigan are reviewing their crisis plans this week. Immediately after hearing the news on Friday, superintendents in Petoskey and Charlevoix started to talk with staff about their current plans and see if changes or updates need to be made.
"This issue here is going to cause us to go back and rethink what we're doing to make sure we have the pieces in place to keep the kids as safe as possible, our goal is to keep the kids as safe as possible as much as we can," Charlevoix Superintendent Robert Gendron said.
Today, Gendron has been taking calls from concerned parents and he has also been in touch with the Sheriff's department to make sure the school and law agencies are on the same page when it comes to a crisis plan.
"We work with the schools very closely in doing the lockdown training and we would try to expose as many of our officers as we can to the training as we can during those lockdown," Charlevoix County Sheriff Don Schneider said.
In Petoskey, Superintendent John Scholten is also reviewing his schools emergency management plans. He tells 7&4 news that his school already locks all of the doors during the school day and there has been a high security plan in place for years dating back to Columbine. And he says his staff is up-to-speed on the lock down procedures in each building.
"The main object of that lockdown is to get kids out of harms way and just keep them safe as possible as quickly as possible and have the authorities on our site as quickly as possible," Scholten said.
But as many Superintendents we have talked with tell us, there is only so much more the districts can do.
"I think short of putting armed guards at the doors and putting bulletproof glass or getting rid of windows in the school I don't know if there's much more that we can do from my standpoint," Gendron said.
