Milford Schools 'Violent Intruder' Training set for Friday

Editor's Note: the following release was issued by the Milford Public Schools.

This Friday, Milford Public Schools will be one of the first school districts in the greater Boston area to be dedicating staff professional development time to provide all employees with a unique, custom-designed violent intruder workshop at the Milford High School campus from 12:30 – 2:30 pm. More than 400 administrators, teachers, staff and support personnel will be participating in this scenario-based workshop designed to prepare staff to deal with school security threats. 

The workshop stems from the recent acts of school violence – most specifically the tragedy in Newtown, CT. Wanting to empower staff to be prepared to deal with the unthinkable,

“We felt it was important for the district to provide this training for all members of our staff -- giving them the tools and knowledge necessary to deal with any type of school violence or crisis situation,” said Tremblay. “The response to this upcoming training has been overwhelmingly positive and it reinforces the notion that the safety of our children is without question the most important thing to all of us.” 

The training will include lockdown and evacuation scenarios that will be facilitated by local and regional authorities with staff members engaged in non-physical role play. Simulated gunfire (blanks) will be included in this training. All employees will be given a full orientation to the program before any scenario-based training begins.

President of Synergy Jay Brennan (www.Synergy911.us) and his training team have done much advance preparation for the custom-designed workshop including site visits, reviews of current policies and procedures, and meetings with administrators and personnel involved. “Synergy is designing this training for the Milford Public Schools at a level that can be considered cutting-edge,” said Brennan. “It was important to administrators involved that workshop participants actually got to hear what a gunshot might sound like. This kind of training is what members of our Synergy team do best. Collectively we have more than 150 years of response experience in the fields of law enforcement, healthcare, fire service and emergency management. This real-world experience is invaluable when combined with equal expertise in exercise management, emergency planning, training and education.”

This training is meant to be an above-and-beyond measure to augment the many security procedures that Milford Public Schools already has in place including: police walkie-talkies in all schools allowing administrators to communicate directly with dispatch and police officers on patrol; LobbyGuard, a school visitor security management system; cameras and buzzers at all school entry points; and active shooter training for police officers for the past eight years at all schools during school vacations.