By Kevin Matula

The Karnes City Board of Trustees adopted a resolution for the District Emergency Operations Plan, at a special meeting on April 14.

Emergency Response Crisis Management Coordinator Shelby Dupnik addressed the board on the district plan.

"The unfortunate reality in Texas is that school districts in Texas and across our country may be tested either directly, indirectly in an adverse event and that can occur with little or no warning," Dupnik said. "And thanks to the efforts of our state and local officials, teachers and staff I think our schools in Karnes County remain safe."

According to Dupnik, the Texas Unified School Safety Standards were created to create a "framework" to help develop school emergency plans.

"The unified standards, does not create a mandate it just makes a recommendation of standard practices throughout the emergency operations community," Dupnik said. "School safety effects the community… the expectation is for your school district to be safe."

Dupnik said that these standards are a "baseline" for strategic planning. The standards include sections such as prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The prevention/mitigation section of the plan addresses what school districts need to do prior to an emergency. The preparedness section is aimed towards as Dupnik said, "the worse case scenario." Response is devoted to steps taking in a crisis/emergency, and recovery deals with how the district will restore the school back to a learning environment after crisis/emergency.

"The school district in a recovery process is a big signal to the community saying, ‘Hey things are okay, we’re healing and we’re going to get on with what we need to do,’" Dupnik said.

Dupnik noted that Texas Education Code thirty-seven also requires the school to have a "security audit" every three years. It requires each campus to practice and exercise in school drills, such as bus evacuation, going into a building and leaving a building. The district has been doing regular drills such as fire, bad-weather and bus-evacuation on different campuses, district wide.

Secondary schools Principal Jeanette Winn reported to the school board on the May 30 Graduation at Poss Johnson Field.

"The senior class officers came and met with me; they had a couple ideas for graduation, wanting to simplify it a little bit," Winn told board members. "If they come to me with ideas such as ‘We want to each do a cart-wheel before receiving our diploma,’ I would’ve said no. The ideas they had are slightly different from what we’ve had in the past."

According to Winn, the senior class voted to not have a guest speaker, because of time constraints. The senior class participates in a parent-sponsored "Project Graduation," after graduation.

"This year we’re having an on-site Project Graduation," Winn said. "We’re very excited about that. The students just overwhelmingly selected that."

There will also be no individual presenters for student scholarships, students will have their name called out and their scholarships will be said.