HARLINGEN — As we move closer to the new school year in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre, parents and students are certainly thinking now more than ever about safety.
Danny Castillo, director of emergency management and school safety for the Harlingen school district, is working this summer in partnership with the Harlingen Police Department and other entities to make sure kids and staff members are safe this school year.
Castillo, who took his current position three years ago when it was created, spoke in-depth about best practices and the Texas School Safety Center located at Texas State University in San Marcos.
One of those best practices is active shooter training, which will soon be offered to Harlingen school district staff members.
“That is one of the key training components that we will be addressing before the start of school,” Castillo said. “That is another best practice that we are following, and we want to make sure that our staff are trained in safety procedures and there is a component of that which is active shooter/active threat procedures on what an individual staff member can do.”
The benefit of active shooter training extends beyond school campuses.
“It’s also safety thought processes and just ways of conducting yourself where it raises situational awareness that staff members can take with them when they’re out and about in their off-duty time as well, if they’re out at the stores or at a public venue,” Castillo said. “These are some of those best practices that have been emanating from the Department of Homeland Security.”
DHS was created just days after Sept. 11, 2001, and the call went out across the U.S.: “If you see something, say something.”
Those words are more true today than ever. No longer are airline passengers and office workers the only targets. Now, it’s everyone from fourth graders to people shopping for groceries.
Creating this kind of awareness in which people are more observant of their surroundings can help make the community as a whole much safer, Castillo said.
“In the event where they’ll be encountering some type of threatening situation it gives them a good framework to understand what their options are so they can be better prepared to respond to those things,” he said.
The school district has been preparing for heightened security for quite some time, long before the Uvalde massacre. It created Castillo’s position three years ago for just that purpose.
“Obviously as a nation there have been a lot of concerns on how to make our school districts safer across the nation,” Castillo said. “So even here in the State of Texas there were a lot of new best practices that were emanating from the state level, lessons learned I guess from other states and other situations in other areas of the country.”
That’s why the district created his position and brought him on board.
“What was told to me from the district was they just realized that this area of emergency management and safety for our district was a complex process that needed somebody that had background experience in order to head that up,” he said. “So they created this position to enhance the district’s efforts, to secure our schools and just to make sure that we were implementing and adhering to those best practices as they are identified.”
And Castillo has plenty of background.
