The University of North Florida will soon teach educators how to respond to active shooters on campus. UNF’s Institute of Police Technology and Management is about to release an online training portal for teachers. Former police officer Kyle Clark coordinates online training at UNF’s Institute of Police Technology and Management. He says with school shootings’ happening across the country, people should know what to do. “There’s a lot of training that police officers go through for active-shooter training,” Clark said. “But there’s really no training available for teachers and staff to learn what to do, rather that just you know hide in the classroom.”

Clark says the curriculum gives practical tips using research and materials from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, along with UNF research. Clark says the new training program will teach the “seven outs,” — including get out, call out, hide out...“[And] there’s take-out, which is the last resort,” Clark said. “If the shooter comes into your room, then you’ve got the last resort. You may have to use physical violence to try to stop that active shooter because they’re not coming in there to be nice.” And he says the tutorial will teach faculty how to assess how emergency-ready their classrooms are, something he says people don’t like to think about.

“Where are you vulnerable, you know how many windows do you have? Do you have curtains? Blinds? You can pull them down,” Clark said. “And so those things we talk about in advance because most people don’t plan ahead for this kind of an event.” He says the two-hour course also touches on preventing incidents by spotting abnormal behavior and what to expect from police if something does happen. He says teachers in elementary schools through college can benefit from the information as well as people who work in churches or office buildings. The curriculum will be available in January, starting at a cost of $29 for a single person to enroll.