STARKVILLE — Teachers at Sudduth Elementary arrived Thursday knowing some type of safety training was in store.

As they went about the duties of preparing for the upcoming school year, sounds of gunfire on the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District campus broke their normal routine.

A teacher’s assistant, who was with a group of employees headed to the gymnasium for a safety meeting when she heard the shots, said she believed they were “100% real.”

“We started running to the safest spots that we could,” said the teacher’s assistant, who spoke with The Dispatch anonymously due to concerns of retaliation. “I was very frightened. We were very caught off guard. No one knew what was happening. We just knew that we needed to stick together and find the safest possible place for each and every one of us.”

The shots were real, but the bullets were blanks, fired from a school resource officer’s handgun, District Police Liaison Sammy Shumaker told The Dispatch. It was a type of active shooter drill the teachers didn’t know was coming.

“Typically, they would expect us to come in, and they would see the stuff we were going to use, because normally we would use a rifle … and I would be the one to walk in with that on my shoulder,” Shumaker said. “And we would come in and talk to them and let them know what we were going to do and this and that. This year, we didn’t do that. I did not have the long gun. We had a handgun, and they didn’t see it.”

The teacher’s assistant said employees rushed to their safe spots in the school, where they hid, waiting for an all-clear to confirm they were safe.

“Afterwards, everyone was nervous still,” she said. “Tensions were high. Everybody was wondering what was going on. A lot of people continued to stay in their safe spots because we didn’t know if it was real or not. We just knew that we needed to protect ourselves.”

A Sudduth teacher, who also spoke to The Dispatch anonymously, said she knew active shooter training was on the agenda for Thursday, but she didn’t know specifics. The shots were unexpected and “frightening,” she said. After the debriefing, she said she felt better prepared for an actual active shooter situation.

The Mississippi School Safety Act of 2019 requires principals and teachers to develop and conduct an active shooter drill within the first 60 days of each new school semester for students, teachers and staff. It does not require simulated gunfire as part of that training.

Shumaker said the new scenario was meant to get teachers’ “thinking differently,” since active shooter attacks have also been changing over time. He said the Sudduth teachers behaved “admirably” after the shots went off, as none of the teachers froze. After the drill, he said, he debriefed the teachers, explaining how a “bad guy” will not give any warning.

“They have to be exposed to that because the more exposure you have to that, in the case of the real situation, now you’re conditioned to know what to do,” Shumaker said.

Shumaker, a retired chief SRO for the district, leads its active shooter training. In an email to The Dispatch, Superintendent Tony McGee said Shumaker briefed him on the training scenario.

“The training involved simulated gunfire in the school so that staff could get a simulated event of what might happen during an active shooter event,” McGee wrote. “We know that simulated gunfire can be uncomfortable, but I know that a school shooting event will also be uncomfortable. The better we can prepare staff for that day the more lives we can hopefully save. Seconds count when an event takes place and it’s important that we prepare like it’s a real event.”

Training is required for all campuses, and Public Information Officer Haley Montgomery said all have included simulated gunfire.

Other area districts train differently
SOCSD is an outlier in the area with how it conducts its active shooter training.

Columbus Municipal and Lowndes County school districts, for example, do not use simulated gunfire with their teachers.

“Simulation drills can be traumatic for students and teachers because they may not be able to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not,” Assistant Superintendent Craig Chapman said. “We work to teach them the necessary steps to adjust and react when faced with an active shooter. They are already faced with lockdown drills, which can be traumatic as well. Simulated gunfire has not been proven to help prevent school shootings.”

LCSD works with the county sheriff’s office on its active shooter training, according to Superintendent Sam Allison. The district only uses simulated gunfire in training for its SROs and not with teachers.

None of the districts use simulated gunfire during student safety drills.

Shumaker said he has coordinated active shooter drills with the Starkville Police Department in years past. He did not reach out to SPD this year, however, because the department is understaffed and he felt “confident we could do it.”

SPD Chief Mark Ballard confirmed none of his officers were present at SOCSD’s campus active shooter training this year and wouldn’t comment on specific methods used. However, he said simulated gunfire is used to train Starkville Police Department officers.

“You cannot adequately train unless you’re doing what you can to simulate the environment you’re going to be placing your people in,” Ballard said. “You’ve got to adrenalize the situation and see how they perform under adrenaline. … I fully embrace the usage of simulated gunfire in training for officers as long as the training protocols are adequately in place.”

Ballard would not comment on the use of simulated gunfire with civilians present.

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