Call 911? No, call it a career path as students tackle a public safety curriculum

The place: Shawnee Mission South High School.

The time: About 0800 hours.

A quiet has fallen over a room strewn with overturned chairs. One student lies immobile in the middle of the floor. Another looks to have a shard of glass sticking out of her arm. Vested emergency workers ask and take notes.

“Can you remember what happened? Do you know where you area? Are you able to walk?”

It would be a shocking scene but for the occasional giggle.

But the students taking part in this school shooting simulation are for the most part serious about the exercise, which they hope will give them a boost when they start earning college degrees and applying for jobs as police, firefighters and paramedics.

Students at South and future students at the new Olathe West High School have signed on for courses in a public safety curriculum — a relatively new idea to Johnson County that school administrators hope will be a win-win both for the students and for police and fire departments struggling to fill vacancies.

In the Shawnee Mission district, the program is called Project Blue Eagle and classes are offered at each high school. In Olathe, the public safety curriculum is the latest addition to 15 career-readiness programs known as 21st Century Academies. It will be taught in specially designed space at Olathe West when that school opens next fall.

School administrators hope to address two needs with the new courses: Career readiness for students in fields where jobs are waiting, and an improved candidate pool for police and fire departments.

“Every time we’ve had an idea for an academy it has been an outgrowth of what seems to be a demand in a career field,” that wasn’t being met, said Alison Banikowski, associate superintendent of teaching and learning at the Olathe district.

John Douglass, director of safety and security at the Shawnee Mission district, agreed. “It fits in with our college and career-ready stance on education,” he said.

Public safety career training in high schools seems to be a growing trend. A quick online search turns up school districts from Ohio to Arkansas to Los Angeles offering some kind of in-school training. In Olathe and Shawnee Mission, a big part of the impetus has come from local law enforcement offices.

Both programs are new. Shawnee Mission’s just started this school year and Olathe’s won’t start until next fall.

But although there are differences in the programs, the idea is the same — introduce students to a field that has job openings that often go begging, while giving police and firefighters a better pool of job candidates.

Introduction to public safety

The Project Blue Eagle program at Shawnee Mission got its start about a year ago, when Douglass was asked to come up with public safety courses.

Blue Eagle focuses on three areas: law enforcement, firefighting and emergency medical technicians, and law. The idea was suggested by several city administrators who came to the district expressing the need, Douglass said.

Enrollment was heavier than expected, he said, “but we anticipated it would be well received.” Some 368 enrolled in the first class, introduction to public safety.

Because the program is only in its first year, not all the courses are up and running. The first classes are open to high school students of all grades, but students wanting the upper levels will have to be accepted and to have met the prerequisites, Douglass said. Most classes are offered at all of the district’s high schools, but future highly specialized upper-level courses may be limited to one location.

The program relies on expertise from current and former police and firefighters who have been certified to teach, as well as high school teachers with additional training.

So far the feedback has been good, Douglass said. Next year, he expects enrollment may be 700 to 800, increasing to over 1,000 once all classes are running.

At Olathe, public safety will be a new addition to an already-existing smorgasbord of 15 academies that focus on different specialties. Like other academies with specific space needs, the public safety program will be offered at one location. Olathe West, the newest high school, will have space specially configured for the equipment and needs of the program.

The idea is to integrate the training into high school course work while still leaving enough time left for things like band, choir and athletics, Banikowski said.

Olathe is finding ways to work public safety into typical high school classes. Foreign language may become Spanish for first responders, and fine arts might be centered on how to photograph a crime scene, for instance. Physical education courses will likely have rope climbing and obstacle courses required of applicants for firefighting and police.

The Olathe academies also are different from Shawnee Mission’s Blue Eagle in the way students are admitted. The application process starts as early as eighth grade. Like college, it involves a look at past grades and attendance, teacher recommendations and an interview. Seniors in the program can do a capstone project such as an internship or special project.

“It’s an opportunity for students,” Banikowski said. “Someone who says gosh, I always wanted to be a firefighter can get some boots-on-the-ground experience.” Even if they don’t end up in that career, they’ve had a chance to explore the possibility before declaring a college major, she said. “It’s OK because it doesn’t cost your parents anything.”

Building a pool of job candidates

Law enforcement and firefighters throughout the county have been enthusiastic about the programs and have even helped develop the curriculum and offered teaching assistance. They say it’s in their best interest for many reasons.

Foremost is the difficulty agencies have reported in filling vacancies. The Johnson County sheriff’s office, for example, has been working hard to keep up with pending retirements and additions to the force.

The retirements create a constant potential for openings, since deputies can retire at age 50 with 20 years of experience. “Most will stay, but you have to realize that potential,” said former Sheriff Frank Denning.

New law enforcement hires don’t just walk in and start work the Monday after they are accepted, either. The vetting and training takes time and expense.

Once people are hired, Denning said, there’s one to three months of vetting and background checks followed by a minimum of 14 weeks of required training before they can get oriented and begin handling cases.

Recent social unrest also may contribute to the lack of a deep candidate pool, he said.

“There’s a little bit of angst about pinning the badge on,” he said, for young people concerned about losing friends or becoming alienated from their families. “We tell young people it does take courage to put on the uniform.”

Although the shootings of police officers and protests over alleged racial bias have been much in the news the past few months, things are no worse now than they were in the early 1970s, say law enforcement officials in the county. In fact, Douglass said, the number of officers killed on duty dropped off after bullet-proof vests became common equipment.

Diversity is another positive point for the high school programs.

By offering courses in high school, law enforcement officials hope to reach a more diverse population that might not have sought out the information otherwise. The Shawnee Mission program is about 50 percent women and 40 percent minority, Douglass said.

Two Shawnee Mission seniors told an audience gathered at the annual State of the District breakfast that the program has opened their minds to the possibility of a career in public safety.

“I took the program just out of curiosity,” said Angel DeJesus Capetillo. But he warmed to it when he found out there are job opportunities in police and fire departments.

Likewise Angeles Martinez-Pena said, “This is opening my mind to a whole new area of life.” She is interested in firefighting as a result.

But perhaps the biggest reason law enforcement likes the public safety programs is that they teach prospective future job applicants what the career is really like.

A lot of places get plenty of applicants but are choosy about who they will spend the time and expense to train. Overland Park usually had a lot of applicants for its police force but only hired about five of every 100, said Douglass, a former Overland Park chief of police.

“A lot of times when kids think about and apply for this they don’t think about what the job entails,” he said. That means weekends, night work, seeing dead bodies. “This is a way we can screen those individuals way early. They’ll know what it means to work in those professions before they even think about applying.”

Olathe Police Chief Steve Menke agreed the programs will help give students more realistic expectations. The perception is that law enforcement is all about chasing down bad guys, he said, “when the reality is, while that we do get into car chases and foot chases, it’s not very frequent. Most officers never fire their guns in the line of duty except to practice at a range.”

Setting expectations

High school programs can also be useful in letting students know the conduct expectations that will be placed on them, Menke said. Applicants are asked about drug use or illegal activities in lie detector tests as part of the hiring process. A “yes” answer can in some cases disqualify them from a job.

“If you can get out in front of any student and help guide them in their conduct is a good thing,” Menke said.

Not every student will want to go into law enforcement. But even the ones who don’t will end up with a better understanding of first responders, say law enforcement officials.

Some at the school shooting simulation at South were more interested in medicine.

Andrew Anderson, an Overland Park senior who played the part of a dead body during the simulation, said that he is not in the Blue Eagle program but that the training was still useful. “It’s a good experience to be in the situation so if anything happens in the future I won’t be nervous or anxious,” he said.

Kaitlyn Shaw, 14, of Overland Park, said she’s benefited from classes on cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency first aid. Shaw, a freshman, wants to become a police officer.

Likewise Phillip Chubick, 17, a junior and Keeli Ward, 16, a junior say they think the high school courses will give them an advantage in getting into future programs.

“I think it’s going to help me be one step above other students who might not know what they’re doing or haven’t taken a class,” said Chubick, who is interested in firefighting.

The public safety programs are one aspect of a larger philosophical change in high school education, Douglass said.

In years past, “K-12 was designed to get kids to college. Each class was designed to get to the next class,” he said. “I think we’ve come through the last recession understanding that we’ve produced a lot of bachelor’s degrees that have no direct job applications.

“When degrees don’t relate to any kind of job, as costly as college has come to be, I don’t think we’ve helped them a lot. Programs like this help them be both career and college ready.”

This story was originally published January 17, 2017 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Call 911? No, call it a career path as students tackle a public safety curriculum."