GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Grand Rapids Public School went on lockdown Thursday after a shooting happened on the same block.
READ MORE: GRPD: Homicide suspect dead following ‘running gun’ shootout with police
Southeast Career Pathways on Jefferson Avenue has protocols in place, which it put into action as soon as the shooting happened.
The small school, with about 50 students and only about six staff members, hoped to never have anything like this happen; however, they say they understand that they may, unfortunately, have to deal with violence nearby.
“What we do is we try to limit the exposure of it to the immediate scene by taking our students out of different doors, getting them out of the windows and we just don’t want them to be exposed to some of the incidents that may happen in our community,” Larry Johnson, Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Public Safety and School Security, told FOX 17.
Southeast Career Pathways dismissed school early Thursday once it was cleared to do so. GRPS says there’s a process in place to make sure students were not confronted directly with what was happening right in front of school property.
“We use our reunification process. We moved all our kids to another location. They’re all bussed to another school location where parents were able to pick them up at that school location. If a parent arrived to the school in that process, they are able to sign their kid out, but there are no kids that were allowed to walk home today,” Johnson added.
GRPS added staff members moved students away from windows and doors to make sure they weren’t near gunfire.
The district says it has its own investigation it will go through to make sure it executed the right procedures
