Community Roads Invite & School Safety with Officer Nanney

What if there was an effortless way to ensure our children's safety in schools while also creating a warm and welcoming environment? It sounds like a daunting task, but Superintendent David Howe and Officer Brent Nanny are making it happen. With a shared vision and collaborative efforts, they're working tirelessly to strike the perfect balance. This episode pulls back the curtain on their daily routines, emergency preparations, and uniform safety protocols - all aimed at providing the safest possible environment for our children.

Our guest, Officer Nanny, isn't just about ensuring school safety - he's also here to bring joy to kids during the holiday season! We chat about the upcoming 'Shop with a Cop' initiative, where first responders take kids on Christmas shopping sprees. We also delve into the lighter side of Officer Nanny's work, from reading to elementary kids to sharing a laugh over mistaken identities. But at the heart of it all, we express our deepest gratitude to emergency personnel like Officer Nanny, whose dedication and commitment keep our communities safe. So tune in and join us as we navigate the intersection of safety and community in our schools.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

I'm David Howe, Superintendent of the Jefferson R7 School District, and I'm joined by Officer Brent Nanny from Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. Thank you for joining us today. And first of all, a quick promo, If you're seeing this before December 7, Thursday December 7. We'd love to have you at our Rhodes County Planning Meeting. We're hosting that for the Jefferson County group that's coming in. That affects Highway 1, Exit 170, out on I-55 and the River Cement in the outer road. We've been promoting that actively. You cannot really be late to that event. It is kind of an open event. They have information out you can go ask questions of what's going on. But we encourage our community because it will have a direct impact on the traffic specific of Exit 170. So I wanted to throw that out there.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Let's get back to really why we're here and that is, first of all, thank you for what you do in law enforcement and also to all of our emergency services, whether it be our local Sheriff's Department, Fire Department, ambulance, anybody involved in keeping us as a community safe. We certainly appreciate your commitment to that. Within our district. Planning is part of our CSIP development. Our priority number one and it's listed there very clearly is keeping this place safe and have an respectful environment. I was very fortunate on July 27th this summer Officer Nanny helped arrange a meeting between the school district, Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, Fire Department and emergency services. I walked away with that meeting so impressed You're always impressed with what they do, but to hear the detail of preparation they go through.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Part of that meeting, I found a little interesting was we talked about having sort of this drill or time for them to collaborate on our campus, and you hear about this in the summer, but really when do the Especially the firemen.

Speaker 2: 1:59

I mean, when they're putting all their turnout gear on, winter's a lot better for them because I mean they can get dehydrated and overheated so quickly in the summer on training exercises and stuff and they're already running real fires throughout the years. So sometimes you know they move those trainings to the fall or the winter because it's a lot more easier for them on their uniforms.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Part of our discussion that day was when is the best time to do it?

Speaker 1: 2:24

And we looked at the day after school the first semester on December 21st. So in the coming weeks you'll be seeing notifications from us that basically the campus will be closed that day, except for limited personnel, and you may see more emergency services in the area. You should not be alarmed. It is a chance for the group to work together and kind of go through maybe what they're looking at, because my takeaway from that meeting is that each group does very well or very good at what they do and their plans, but sometimes they don't get that opportunity to work together, correct it's.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Sometimes it's difficult to get the training to mesh up between the different departments and agencies. So on the 21st, emergency responders from the fire department, paramedics and the sheriff's office are going to meet at the school and we're going to kind of go over an overview of our emergency response for any kind of incident, from earthquakes, fire, mass casualties, anything that could occur. We want to have staging positions, we want to have reunification positions and everybody's kind of we all know our job, but sometimes it's good to get there together and everybody can kind of go okay, this is exactly where we want to start putting our resources and our people.

Speaker 1: 3:35

Yeah, and part of that too is, you know a stem from that was outreaching to our local churches and their leaders. They've been very gracious in offering their campuses during the day and their facilities during the day, if we do have a situation on campus.

Speaker 1: 3:48

we need to move kids or have a pickup place. So really a great community time for us to really look and keeping our kids safe. We appreciate you putting that together. Let's talk about you know I got an education about the time Columbine happened and you've been in law enforcement for many years just by nature of your training and I think the way education's evolved.

Speaker 1: 4:08

There's not a day specifically as an administrator, that you don't get up and your first thought is what can we do to keep this place safe? And it's? It is a it's sometimes a daunting position. It's always great to have great partners in it. What are some things you do on a daily basis to make sure that it's not just being out there directing traffic or greeting people at the door? What are some things you do that maybe the public isn't aware of?

Speaker 2: 4:33

So every day I try to get to every building, make sure that people inside feel safe, to make sure that the kids feel safe and that I'm not in the same position every day at the same time. I change up my schedules. Sometimes I sit in the parking lot, sometimes you'll see me sitting on the road. I walk through all the buildings, I check all the doors. I immediately get with our maintenance that there's a door issue because the buildings need to be secure. We need to make sure that everyone coming in and out is accounted for Children, adults, parents, visitors, maintenance people. So we have a really good system in place here of having background checks and stuff for everybody that comes on campus. So every day I try to do walkthroughs of all the buildings greeting kids, but also doing safety checks, making sure there's nothing out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1: 5:20

So one of the things I think Officer Nanny does bring to us is that sometimes one building is doing something very well.

Speaker 1: 5:26

another building is doing something else very well, but it's sort of this alignment of resources across the district and I think it's put our building administration, I think I put our building support staff, our administrative assistants, kind of on the same page with how we're accepting guests. So it's kind of common throughout the district. Those procedures and protocols is simple as that. It's kind of simple as that sounds. Sometimes when you don't have somebody moving from building to building to observe those things, you kind of track what everybody's doing and think that the process may be different somewhere else. So I appreciate you doing that.

Speaker 1: 5:59

I know your commitment to it and there's things that you do every day that people don't see, that help keep us safe. Let's talk about something that the district was recently awarded. The district was awarded a safety grant. We applied for it last year. There was kind of some limited funds but really we did not receive it. But really because of the commitment of the district for many years to keep the place safe, really, the age of our buildings when you really look at other school districts, our buildings are still fairly new. I mean it's crazy. It sounds. Telegraph is not old compared to the speaking other districts and you have the high school.

Speaker 2: 6:32

But you also have the bond issue in 2017, when things were built. I think it's 2015,.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Maybe it was passed I can't remember, but around 2017,. All the construction was going on. The entry ways were upgraded, some stuff was placed on the glass at that time. Long story short, we didn't qualify because we had done all those things. Now the second go around went better for us, and there were two specific things you were involved in, one of them being the buckets.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Yes, so I've gotten the idea. So Hillsborough had done this in the past. If there's an emergency situation where maybe kids have to stay in a room for a long period of time, we want to have some basic necessities, medical gear, pry bars, bandages, tourniquets. If a child, say there's an earthquake and a building is collapsed and it's everyone's okay inside, but they have to stay there for a while, we wanted they might have to use the facilities and so we've set up a portable toilet station inside the buckets, like all the things that you would need for that, just about anything that can get you through. You know, a 10 to 12 hour window of just having to stay inside a room, yeah, and the second part of that is is really and this is coming to discussion- maybe from the summer that you and I had.

Speaker 1: 7:47

If there's a situation where the lights are off in the building and or there's smoke, it's to have signage up that's not only there but also reflective.

Speaker 2: 7:56

So that's part of it too that we're working on Started with the outside of the building. The numbers on the windows on the outside of the building are all night reflective, so if a emergency services show up, they can shine a flashlight on the outside of the building and they reflect the numbers, they'll know exactly which room number they may need to go to. So they're the signage at the entrance. I think that's what you're going to next.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Yeah, kind of the well at the corners of the hallways and your light would shine up and be able to see it with internally.

Speaker 1: 8:21

I also want to compliment you to a couple of years ago, all the outside numbers, those are things we kind of take for granted now, but the the, how much time you put into that and when you, when you're in these situations, you're bringing people onto your campus that aren't there every day, so to be able to get them to the right spot and get them to the close, no matter what the situation is earthquake, anything, of course gives us a place to go.

Speaker 2: 8:42

So when, when visitors enter the building, sometimes there's two or three different ways to go when they first come in so quickly knowing that rooms 102 through 108 or to the right with large signage it's reflective could be the matter of you know, seconds may matter. So we want to get those emergency services where they need to go. So we in part of the safety grant is getting that reflective signage in large to when people come in the entrance they'll be able to know exactly which wing of the building to go to, because not everybody has it has the time to pull up the schematics of the building and try to zoom in and figure out where they're going. So for them those seconds may matter. That's what we really want.

Speaker 1: 9:20

Sometimes the challenge of a school is your schools traditionally want to be very welcoming for the community but as we've gone through this challenge of safety.

Speaker 1: 9:31

I think so we run into that balance of making sure we understand there's procedures and protocol to get kids in and out of the building, parents in and out of the building, whatever's going on. That's a unique challenge at times because you still want to be welcoming, you want people to be at your school, but you also want to control who's coming in and out and I think you do a great job of keeping us up on that.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Yeah, it's a struggle because, parents want that that openness with the school district and I hundred percent understand that. But for my aspect I see it from the safety standpoint is every time we open the door there's a challenge or there's there there might be. We're defeating our own security. So we really have, and it started during COVID we were able to limit the access for parents and just people just kind of standing in the office and just having conversations and stuff, which has kind of been our seven way for so long. But you know, times do change. We're trying to, we're trying to still meet the needs of the parents and feeling like that they're being heard and that they're they, they can interact with the, the staff, but also keeping the kids safe and keeping the building secure on the flip side.

Speaker 1: 10:35

I think the way it's kind of set up and picking up and dropping off kids, I think there's a little bit more of a fluid system to it's a little bit quicker for the parents.

Speaker 2: 10:41

I think it's a little more convenient so I know in the in the past in the afternoons it's really been gridlocked because of times and releases. So Dr Howard reviewed all the times and we, we adjusted just a few minutes and now we I don't have to stand in the intersection in the afternoons anymore. I mean drivers do need to be a little bit more careful, but they're not backing up and blocking the entrances to the other schools, so there's actually a really it's way more fluid to get out of the district in the afternoons now that was a goal of mine to get officer Nanny out of that intersection as much as possible am we're still committed to that process.

Speaker 1: 11:16

The first moves to do anything without asking for funds or see what we could do with our structure.

Speaker 2: 11:22

We've handled the afternoon.

Speaker 1: 11:23

I think we had a little effect in the morning yes reduced a little bit of reduction in time. But I think that that's as you know, as we go through as a community and we can planning how we effectively keep that safe. You know he's a part of the planning and we'll be reaching out to everybody in the community. Last thing, good thing I'll shop with the cop. What goes in there?

Speaker 2: 11:44

yeah, probably one of my favorite days of the year. Well, there's two of them. December 5th, at the DeSoto Walmart, there'll be multiple schools brought in. The kids are given a gift card and they basically can buy whatever toys and everything they want.

Speaker 2: 12:00

They go with an emergency services personnel it's usually a cop or firefighter, paramedics, dispatchers and they get to escort these kids out and give them Christmas as they wouldn't normally get to have, and on those days you might see 50 emergency personnel vehicles with their lights on there. It's not, it's not a drill, it's not training. It's for the best reason and it's giving. And now in December 7th it'll be at the Festus Crystal City Walmart. In those times you can come in, you can. They're selling t-shirts and they they take cash donations on site while the events going on. So it's an awesome day. If you're in there, you get to see these kids are absolutely ecstatic so if somebody is interested in participating in donating towards that they can do that prior to those days, correct?

Speaker 2: 12:43

correct. I know that Jessica Griffall with the Festus PD. You can contact her or they have a Facebook page. There's we have bingo events and trivia nights and there's all kinds of fundraisers for shop with a cop awesome good deal as we close this out.

Speaker 1: 12:59

I guess two things about option any I want to note. I always enjoy going down and reading kids at the elementary school and, as you may notice, we share the same hairstyle and I. Often the kids go hi, officer, nanny, I just let it roll. How you doing, you know, just let it go in first of all. But secondly, your commitment to this podcast. I walk in here and we had a smile early on because I hear the famous Anchorman practice, unique New York you know I've been doing it all morning it's been fantastic, I don't talk on camera very often.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Thank you for what you do, thank you for what all of our first responders do, and no matter what area you're in, and thank you for joining us.