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Media Release | August 16, 2006

Washoe County School District principals and administrators participated in the Aug.16th Tabletop emergency preparedness exercise at Sparks Middle School taught by Visual Imagry's training team.

About the workshop

The Introduction to Emergency Management Workshop and Tabletop Exercise were part of the on-going emergency preparedness and response training offered though Visual Imagry, Inc. as part of their contract with the District.

The WCSD was awarded a $959,950 grant from the U.S. Department of Education designed to improve school security and the district's ability to respond to emergencies on November 11, 2005.

On January 24, 2006, Visual Imagry, Inc, was selected as the contractor responsible for providing emergency preparedness and response services for the District. Some of the services they are providing will include: inventorying all schools and other WCSD facilities; collecting school-site data including digital photographs; adding floor plans from each school and integrate them into an interactive electronic database. Visual Imagry is also responsible for providing emergency preparedness training for school administrators and emergency management staff.

	Washoe County School District Principals Participate in an Emergency Preparedness & Response Workshop & Tabletop Exercise Nevada - What actions should a Washoe County School District principal take during a school emergency incident, such as a hostage situation? What is the impact on the school? How do they communicate with the media? Today, Visual Imagry's training team introduced participating Washoe County School District high school and middle school principals and administrators with some of the decision-making roles and responsibilities of emergency management during the three-hour workshop: Introduction to Emergency Preparedness and Tabletop Exercise for High School & Middle School Site Administrators. “The goals for this course are to provide participants with a better understanding of the Incident Command System (ICS), the importance of emergency preparedness, their roles in an incident and discuss roles and responsibilities of the emergency team members,” explained Ms. Domingo. “Emergencies occur every day somewhere in the United States and each incident requires a response,” said Dee Beaugez. “Emergency preparedness is critical to emergency management. Preparedness is implemented through a cycle of planning, training, and equipping, exercising, evaluating and taking action to correct and mitigate." Police Chief Mike Mieras said that this training was designed to introduce the principals to the importance of ICS training and he hopes it will provide the ground work for the District to develop "an integrated, community-wide approach to emergency planning." Today’s workshop was designed to allow school site principals to examine their decision-making roles and responsibilities and talk about the tasks and logistics associated with managing a real-life school-site emergency incident. Principals and administrators who participated in the three-hour intensive emergency management training and tabletop exercise were: Amy Callahan, Assistant Principal Swope Middle School; Michele Collins, Senior Director Middle Schools; George Hastings, Assistant Principal Sparks Middle School; Gina Leonhard, Assistant Principal Shaw Middle School; David Nolte, Assistant Principal Galena High School; Thomas Pena; Prim Walters; Joye Williams; and Tim Jaureguito, Dean of Students from Bishop Manogue Catholic High School. Link to WCSD web site - Board of Trustees Background