All districts — Last Friday, inside the sanctuary of ResLife Church, a group of Grandville High School students sat in pews, answering questions from the victim services unit of the FBI. As they talked, a woman in an orange vest that identified her as a “reunifier” came down the aisle with a slip of paper in her hand.
“I’m here for … Shawn Richards,” the woman announced, scanning the paper. She looked up. “Shawn Richards?”
Shawn, a junior, stood up, grabbed her backpack and followed the reunifier, Liz Witt, out of the quiet sanctuary and into a large hallway bustling with people. They calmly but quickly approached a man standing near the back with his arms folded.
“Shawn, is this a trusted adult that you know, and do you feel safe leaving the building with him?” Witt asked, gesturing toward the man.
The two glanced at each other. He was smiling.
“Yes,” said Shawn seriously, and then burst into a smile of her own. “Yes, I do.”
Shawn and the man she was reunited with — Jeffery Wainwright, director of safety for Godwin Heights Public Schools — didn’t actually know each other. But they were playing the roles of parent and child in a simulated reunification exercise — the process in which students are reunited with parents or guardians after being evacuated and transported to an offsite location due to a catastrophic emergency, severe weather or any event that makes a school building unsafe.
“You don’t ever want to have to do this, but it may happen,” Kent ISD Director of Safety and Security Sean Burns said of the reunification process. “It’s probably only going to happen once in a career, though, and you just don’t want to screw it up. If you can practice what to do, why wouldn’t you?”
The Biggest Reason Why
Burns said Kent ISD is in the process of establishing five reunification sites throughout Kent County: one site in each quadrant of the county, plus one central location at Calvary Church in Grand Rapids. They started practice exercises at Calvary in 2024, using the Standard Reunification Method established by the “I Love U Guys” Foundation. At subsequent run-throughs, security officers have been adjusting procedures where appropriate to create a standardized reunification process used across all of Kent County.
Last week’s exercise at ResLife was the first practice run at a different site. Organizers including Burns; Grandville Public Schools Safety Director Mark Easterly; Kelloggsville Public Schools Security Director Jeff Augustine; Wyoming Public Schools Director of Safety, Security and Transportation Joe Steffes; and Region 1 Safety Coordinator John Wittkowski had been working on plans for more than a year.
“This is like our Super Bowl of security,” said Steffes, who noted Kent County is leading the way in Michigan when it comes to reunification preparation. “We all, in this field of work, have what I call a servant’s heart. … To serve our kids and know that we are doing the best we can to get them reunited in a safe place with their parents or guardians that they trust — and to keep working at it to get it right — that’s probably the biggest reason why this is so important.”
Friday’s training drew close to 200 people: staff from public and private schools across the county, officers and other personnel from local law enforcement and the FBI, staff from community organizations like the Salvation Army, school officials from neighboring counties and more.
‘You just don’t want to screw it up. If you can practice what to do, why wouldn’t you?’
— Sean Burns, Kent ISD director of safety and security
Most played a simulated role during the exercise, whether as a “parent,” a greeter or an accountant checking in parents. Others took on jobs at the medical room, translation services, and the social work and victim advocate stations, with the goal of making the site function as realistically as possible.
“We’re trying to build up a knowledge base (within the region) so if we do have an incident, we’ve got people who have been through this,” Burns said. “Kids come and go … but if we build up that knowledge in our community, that’s where it’s going to pay dividends.”
Student Perspective
For Shawn and the rest of her Grandville classmates — who all received parental permission to participate — the process felt relatively straightforward. Upon being notified of “an emergency,” they were picked up at Grandville High School by Kelloggsville buses and driven to ResLife. There, they were escorted into the building through a secure entrance, checked in and directed to the sanctuary to wait to be united with a “parent.”
‘It’s important for kids to know that we have a plan.’
— Chelsea Kittridge, Kent ISD mental health and behavior intervention consultant
Not everything went as planned, which organizers expected. But while waiting for adults to work out the kinks, the high-schoolers had time to think about logistics from a student perspective, Shawn said.
“We were imagining the scenarios where this would even be happening, trying to imagine ourselves with all the kids here, and with the panic and everything, if this was real. It made me a little uneasy,” she said. “We were wondering if (the sanctuary) would actually fit all the kids from our school.
“We were also talking about all the kids who can drive, that they’d probably try to get to their cars. … I can only imagine how much chaos the parking lot would be in. And then you might not know where everybody is if they drive home — I feel like that’s something that needs to be thought about more.”
Shawn’s “parent,” Jeffery Wainwright, appreciated the opportunity to experience the process as a family member rather than a security officer, which he is in Godwin Heights.
“I’m usually the person providing the help and this time I was the person needing the help, so for me it was strange, but it gave me a lot to think about,” said Wainwright, who is also a real-life parent. “I was glad that they ask (the student) if they feel comfortable going with me, because in all the chaos it could be a situation where they don’t feel comfortable, or maybe the kid is not supposed to go home with that person.”
‘We have a plan’
At the conclusion of the exercise, organizers made sure to seek feedback from the GHS students. Their perspectives were as important to the situation as what did or didn’t run smoothly, said Chelsea Kittridge, a Kent ISD mental health and behavior intervention consultant.
“We want to build this environment for kids that is the least traumatizing as possible,” Kittridge said. “If they’re leaving the school building in some sort of emergency, everyone is going to show up with heightened anxiety. We want to see what they feel supported by, or what types of things will be important to have available while they’re waiting for their family members.
“Also, I think it’s important for kids to know that we have a plan.”
Kittridge walked through Friday’s exercise with victim advocates from the FBI, Michigan State Police and the Grand Rapids Police Department to help her gather input and tips from a mental health perspective.
“They’ve been a really great support to help think through what we need to take into account, and how to navigate the emotion that is going to be showing up, de-escalate things and bring some sort of reassurance,” she said. “It’s a lot of work for something we hope we never have to do.”
Burns called the student input “invaluable.”
“I wasn’t sitting on that bus; I didn’t go through it. None of the adults were doing that stuff,” he said. “To hear them say, ‘You might want to look at this,’ that’s what we need. Because, why are we doing this? It’s all for the kids.”
Burns said Kent ISD and district safety officers throughout the county will continue to host reunification exercises regularly — likely twice per year — and invite anyone who wants to receive training in the process. Everyone who attends an exercise will receive a card identifying them as a trained individual who will be able to assist with reunification if an emergency does occur and a reunification site is needed.
“We keep working on it and keep adding things, but I’m fairly confident that if we were to have an incident, we have enough people in the county now that can run this,” Burns said. “There are people who are always thinking about this stuff. And that’s good for our families.”
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