SOUTHINGTON — Faculty and administrators participated in “active aggressor” training conducted by the police department Tuesday at Southington High School.

Sgt. Jeffrey Dobratz said the training had been planned for several months. 

Superintendent of Schools Timothy Connellan said the training was the first of its kind to be conducted in the district. He said the idea for an emergency training session came last winter. The training was available for all faculty and administrators that wished to participate.

“We had some tragic events that occurred last year,” Connellan said. “It was a very anxious time for people that work in schools.”

Classes begin in Southington on Thursday.

Connellan said the training, which took place from noon until 3 p.m., involved the police department, fire department, emergency management and American Medical Response.

“We actually started talking about it in the winter months,” Connellan said. “We’ve been meeting with the Southington Police Department all year.”

Dobratz said the police department created a lesson plan on a variety of scenarios.

Connellan said the Board of Education has been collaborating with the police department and began actively planning the training in the spring. He said the police department has helped update security procedures for each school in the district.

“They helped identify location outside of the school if we had to evacuate,” Connellan said.

Additional “table top” training was also held at DePaolo Middle School and Kennedy Middle School. That training involved a presentation of a variety of scenarios, a discussion from administrators about ways to handle the situation and advice from the police department on best practices.

“I can’t say enough about the Southington police,” Connellan said. “They have put in a tremendous amount of time...”

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