Back in late January, the Clinton County School Safety Commission conducted a joint tabletop exercise involving a school bus crash scenario with hazardous materials.
Thursday morning at the Community Schools of Frankfort, the Commission met to discussion what the aftermath of that exercise told them.
“We took all the lessons learned and I think what you heard today was several different things that were brought up that was similar,” said Rossville Superintendent Dr. Jim Hanna, who is also the chairman of the Clinton County School Safety Commission. “No matter that communication is the key, how we respond to it whether it would be to a staging site or to the scene. Most of us are probably going to a staging sight. But, we have to implement what we’re doing.”
Hanna added that the tabletop exercise was a great chance for all four school corporations to work with fire, EMS, law enforcement, EMA, LEPC and Central Dispatch on how to respond to a mass casualty or a large event.
The tabletop outlined the available resources to the groups, including any capability, service, or equipment that the schools or first responders would normally have during a normal day.
Hanna added several twists and turns to the exercise which involved students from all four county schools along with a semi with hazardous chemicals that had jackknifed onto its side in the middle of State Road 28 during freezing rain conditions. The bus, which was traveling behind the semi, swerved to try and miss the truck, clipped the trailer’s rear and came to rest on the highway causing injuries to both the bus driver, chaperones and students.
Another part of the semi-annual meeting was to discuss cybersecurity and how it affects education.
Steve Ricketts, Director of Technical Services for Roeing IT Solutions in Lafayette, spoke to the group for about an hour highlighting the issue.
Ricketts said there are several types of cybersecurity issues which included things like Ransomware/Malware and Viruses, Phishing or Spear Phishing, and Identify Data Thefts.
Ricketts said that education is ranked third in cybersecurity crimes behind technologies and financial services. He also said that 90 percent of schools have a malware incident recovery plan in place and the average cost for this is $2.73 million.
Ricketts also added talked about recommendations for schools that included not paying the ransomware because you have no guarantee of getting everything back including getting nothing some of the time.
“I think the biggie is awareness of how prevalent it is and how it affects schools as they are businesses or any other institutions,” said Hanna. “I think we’re all vulnerable because of the fact that computer use, especially in the last several months with the pandemic and dealing with that, and remote learning, has increased seven times faster than projected.”
Hanna was asked what type of information would hackers want from schools.
“I don’t know if they would want financial data,” he said. “The thing I would say is they would try to do is lock us down so we couldn’t have access to our data. Our data is critical from routing school buses to knowing who is on the bus to grades and to other information.”
The next commission hearing is tentatively scheduled for January 28, 2022.