OISD hires security consultant, readies safety protocols
A private security consultant recommended by Olney Police Chief Dan Birbeck arrived in town on Aug. 4 to create a multiyear plan to secure the three Olney Independent School District campuses from armed intruders.
After consulting with school trustees, OISD Superintendent Dr. Greg Roach approved the $15,000 assessment by Danny Defenbaugh & Associates of Kaufman to observe the campuses, including student behavior and buildings, to find vulnerabilities.
“We are actually doing two safety audits this summer. One we are doing internally and one we are contracting with Defenbaugh & Associates for an external audit. That puts us miles ahead of the game,” Dr. Roach said.
Mr. Defenbaugh planned to be in town for a couple of days during the week before school started and will visit the campus periodically to make his assessment, Dr. Roach said. Mr. Defenbaugh, a former FBI agent who was the agent in charge of the 1994 Oklahoma City bombing investigation, would provide “the Cadillac of risk assessment,” Chief Birbeck told school trustees at their July 25 meeting. “It will assess how the campus operates, how students move through it to see where we are at the most risk. They would be viewing those things firsthand.”
Chief Birbeck said he worked with Mr. Defenbaugh during his tenure as the safety chief at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. “We worked on his plan in Dallas for years and didn’t touch all of it,” he said.
The trustees questioned Chief Birbeck, who teaches Active Shooter Training for the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, whether he could
See Security on Page 4make an assessment.
“What is the difference between [Defenbaugh] and a local assessment?” said trustee Summer Branum.
Chief Birbeck said Mr. Defenbaugh would analyze student and staff movement and behavior as well as physical measures for weak points in campus security. Although OISD implemented all safety protocols required by the governor’s office and the Texas Education Agency after the Uvalde campus shootings in May, a gunman could still slip into a crowd of students moving between school buildings and the cafeteria, for example, and breach campus defenses,Chief Birbeck said.“It’s hard to be a prophet in your own land,” Chief Birbeck said. “You don’t know whatyou don’t know.”School administrators installed keyless entry and self-locking doors at all entry points, added more than a hundred interior and exterior cameras, acquired door hardware to barricade classrooms and conducted an audit of allcampus doors.Targeted staff will be trained in the use of firearms and will hit the police gun range later this month, Dr. Roach said. “It will be concealed handguns. Nobody is going to know where they are who has them whohas access to them.”Students begin safety drills the first week of classes, and participate in at least two drills per month, Dr. Roach said. The new rules required school safety and behavioral threat assessment teams to meet and to train staff and substitute teachers in specific campus safety procedures overthe summer, he said.All of these procedures must be completed by Sept. 1 and certified to the Texas School Safety Center by Sept. 9, hesaid.“You always have something you can fix or improve on but we are way ahead of the game,”Dr. Roach said.