JCPS fails to follow fire drill policy

For the second consecutive year, Jefferson City Public Schools failed to follow its own policy for monthly fire drills.

For the 2016-17 school year, not a single school followed the requirement. Some schools did not record a single drill for an entire year, raising questions of whether or not the fire drills even happened.

“There was no eyes on it to make sure we were doing what we were suppose to be doing,” said Frank Underwood, transportation, safety & security coordinator for JCPS.

While there was significant improvement for the 2017-18 school year, monthly drills were not done.

Underwood said the policy the district was looking at did not reflect the same policy the board had, causing a misunderstanding of how many fire drills needed to be completed each school year. He said for the 2017-18 school year, communication improved with school principals. It accounts for the possible increase in recorded drills at that time.

Since the initial investigation aired in November 2017, the district said it would take another look at the fire drill policy. At the start of the 2018-19 school year, the district revised the drill policy, lowering the requirement from 10 per year to seven per year.

Underwood said the change was in coordination with the Jefferson City Fire Department, and both agreed that changing the policy from every four weeks instead of every six weeks worked better with scheduling.

“Essentially what the fire department looked at was the six week schedule, as to one every four weeks, because the number of days off we have, weekends and what have you,” Underwood said.

Assistant Jefferson City Fire Chief Jason Turner said he believes every student and staff member knows what to do in an event of a fire emergency.

The state of Missouri does not have a law that requires schools to do fire drills but instead allows the district to make that decision.

However, the Jefferson City district had some issues with its record keeping of fire drills.

The district said for the 2016-17 school year, all schools were “doing fire drills, but they didn’t report them through a central location.” However, documents for the year in question showed a different story.

When asked if another sunshine request for the year in question would reflect what the district said happened, Underwood said: “I don’t believe those records are available because, like I said, they were housed on a calendar, and that was from the past safety security administrator that was here when he left, the records left, they were scrubbed.”

District spokeswoman Ryan Burns said upon the district’s own investigation into the “scrubbing of records,” there was a misunderstanding within the district; no records got deleted.

Burns said in a statement: “The previous School Safety & Security Coordinator did keep a record of fire drills conducted during the 2016-17 school year on his Google calendar, which was retained by the district when he left and is still accessible. However, because there was not an official, centralized system in which schools could log their fire drills at that time, it is possible some drills may have been held that were not captured in that calendar.”

Underwood and Burns said the district is working on making sure their record keeping system is revised.

“We are confident our new centralized system will allow for improved tracking and compliance. The safety and security of our students is a top priority, and we will continue to evaluate and adapt as needed to ensure we are providing a sufficient number of drills with a minimal amount of disruption in the classroom,” Burns said.

ABC 17 News has sunshine requested drills for the 2016-17 school year to see if records have changed. The district is in the process of going to each school to physically look at the drill logs.