RICHMOND, Va. -- School may be out for the summer, but Virginia Center of School and Campus Safety Director Donna Michaelis said when it comes to protecting kids in classrooms, law enforcement cannot take time off.
"It’s really important that during the summer we’re preparing for school to come back," Michaelis explained. "Now is the time that we do the school security checklist that is required by law, do all the safety audits and make sure we do everything that we can to make sure we’re ready to keep kids and staff safe in the upcoming school year.
The organization is wrapping a statewide grant program that gives school divisions funding to update and digitize their floor plans so emergency personnel can take extra measures to prevent worst-case scenarios.
The program was launched by Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2022 which coincided with legislation that was passed by the General Assembly which required that all school divisions in the state have detailed and accurate floorplans. $6.5 million was made available to public schools to go a step furth and make those floorplans digital.
Each school was reimbursed up to $3,500 to make the necessary changes.
The digital aspect is so important because the floorplans need to be entered into the 911 CAD system so that all responding officers whether from that jurisdiction or another jurisdiction have immediate digital access to of the school they were responding to," Michaelis said. "It’s very targeted and it shows them exactly where the doors are, how they are numbered and how to make entry."
Michaelis adds that since the grant program launched in 2022, about 98% of Virginia school divisions, including Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, and Petersburg Public Schools, have virtualized their schematics through a company called Critical Response Group (CRG).
Out of 131 total school divisions 127 participated in the digital map updates through CRG which represents about 92% of all public schools in the Commonwealth. Michaelis says the remaining five school divisions already updated their maps with digital software.
The security plans and security vulnerabilities including these maps are not made available to the public and are protected from Freedom of Information Act requests.
Adam Keene, the active attack program manager at the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, said emergency services in Manassas have already undone multiple trainings using these maps and hope to make drills common practice in school divisions there and across the state.
"They could easily and accurately, through high-resolution imaging from the top down, be able to articulate where exactly those first responders need to be, when they need to be there and why they need to be there," he said.
Keene is encouraging other law-enforcement agencies to partner with schools to do the same.
"We have several different programs that center around an active attack simply because they can occur any and everywhere in today's environment," Keene said. "This can allow us to take leaps and bounds in that standardized response because the hardest part is being able to get multiple agencies... to communicate more effectively.
In the wake of UVA shooting in November 2022 which claimed the lives of three football players, Michaelis says the next step is to integrate the digital mapping program to colleges and universities.
The last budget passed by the general assembly included budget language that allowed DCJS to make grants to higher ed to expand this digital program,” Michaelis said. “We are waiting to find some grant funding by which we can do that.
As the VCSCS explores funding options for those initiatives, Michaelis says other measures to protect and prepare college students from emergencies on campuses will soon be put into practice.
She says HB-713 was recently passed during the last GA session which requires all incoming freshmen in higher education campuses at public universities to be trained in active attack response.
"Should you avoid it, do you deny entry, or do you need to defend yourself?" Michaelis said. "All civilians should know what to do in case of a targeted attack and our Active Attack Program at the Department of Criminal Justice Services is training both law enforcement and civilians across the state how to be an immediate responder."
According to the VCSCS, Virginia was the first state in the country to contact CRG to implement the digital mapping technology consistently across its schools. Since then, 15 other states have followed suit.
"Virginia is a very forward-thinking state and the VCSCS has set off a national movement to provide this consistent type of mapping.
The reason why this is so important that that we need a wholistic, and whole community approach where days of our citizens hiding and hoping is no longer an acceptable form of mitigation and law enforcement saying that we don't have the resources is no longer a good excuse for today's standards," Keene said.
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