KHS prepared to handle ‘situations’

Kagman High School teacher Maria Ornes, standing left, joins some of the students that volunteered in assisting their peers yesterday in preparation for today’s school opening. (Jon Perez)

Kagman High School principal Leila Staffler said they always collaborate with CNMI agencies when it comes to providing emergency preparedness training for their teachers, staff, and students.

Staffler’s comments are in connection with the annual Konfitma all-hazard exercise that took place yesterday at nearby Chacha Oceanview Middle School. She added that they were informed that a Konfitma drill is going to take place at Chacha.

Although they have no role in Konfitma this time, Staffler said they are going to collaborate with agencies like the CNMI Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“All the local agencies collaborate with us to provide training for emergency preparedness. Konfitma is something that is not designed for schools alone. We’re not working with Konfitma today, but we will be working with [local] Homeland Security and other partners to do our own Konfitma at the school level,” said Staffler.

Staffler told Saipan Tribune that they usually do drills with agencies like the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services and other agencies involved in emergency preparedness and first responders.

“When we do our drills, we work with the same agencies to oversee our big emergency preparation activities. We do at least four drills every year, one per quarter, and we do practice the different emergency preparations that we planned,” said Staffler.

She added that they also observe the national Great ShakeOut earthquake drill every year. “We do earthquake preparedness in the month of October, so that’s something that we’ll do again this year.”

Staffler said they also observe drills for fire and also practice what to do in case of a school shooting. “Unfortunately, we do our practices for possible school shooting incidents that I pray would never happen in our community. But we do practice our lockdowns and shelters-in-place.”

“We’ve also updated our fire procedures because we realize that we need to have different evacuation zones in the case of different types of fires. That’s something that we’ve improved from our plan in the previous years.”

“The one thing that might be something different that we will practice this year is trying out the different evacuation zones, depending on the pretend situation that we’re going to set up,” added Staffler.

Today’s opening
Staffler said their preparation for school year 2018-2019 began during the summer break, from the training of their teachers and renovations done at the KHS campus grounds.

“So far so good. We’ve spent more time training teachers this year with the different programs that we’ll be using to support our instruction. Our school preparation for the opening was something we’ve spent over the summer preparing,” said Staffler.

Several students like seniors Alyssa Valdez, Marla Sali, Mary Santos, Jonisha Pangelinan, and Aundrea Aldan also volunteered to assist their peers in signing up for lunch passes, parking permits, and handing out class schedules for this school year.

Staffler said she and her staff are excited and ready to welcome old and new students. “We’ve freshened up all of our classrooms. They are nicely painted and look new.”

“We’ve done a little bit of renovation around the campus: our cafeteria, stage area, and added doors in some buildings that need additional doors. The floors are buffed and we got our different instructional resources that came through over the summer. We’re ready now for the students,” added Staffler.