Mid-Del Schools Prepare for New Emergency Reunification Plan

A metro school district is taking steps to ensure that in the event of an emergency, students can be safely reunited with their families.

Mid-Del Schools just wrapped up a two-day training focused on implementing a new reunification plan, a safety measure designed for crisis situations, such as gas leaks, severe weather, or acts of violence.

“It’s just to make sure that we get it right,” said Mid-Del Superintendent Dr. Rick Cobb. “You’ve already had damage done in a crisis; you don’t want to make it worse by not having a process for getting people reconnected as quickly as possible.”

The district is adopting the nationally recognized "I Love U Guys" Standard Reunification Method, which outlines a controlled process for parents and guardians to safely pick up their children at a designated reunification site.

During the training, district staff and school leaders took on various roles, some as parents, others as students or greeters, to simulate the reunification process. Parents arriving at the site would first show identification, then they would move to another station to match their card with their child to ensure staff releases the student to the correct guardian.

“We need to be able to track that,” Cobb explained. “It’s about making sure a chaotic situation doesn’t get worse.”

Each school has a safety committee made up of staff and parents to help implement the new protocol when students return in the fall.

The training also clarified terminology used in different emergency situations. For example, district leaders emphasized the importance of distinguishing a "hold" where there’s no threat inside the building, from a "lockdown", where there is, that way schools and law enforcement would be on the same page during emergencies.