Skip to main content
Blog Education

Charles Co. to Make It Easier for Parents, Kids to Reunite After Emergency

The process of reuniting parents with children after an emergency can be long and drawn-out. Past incidents across the United States have shown that it can take hours, which seems like an eternity to parents who are trying to find out whether their child is OK.

In Charles County, the school system is working on a plan to streamline the process.

First, Charles County Public Schools officials already know where the kids will go.

“We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the College of Southern Maryland,” said Jason Stoddard, the school district’s director of safety and security.

“So, any time that we have to do a mass evacuation of any of our schools — whether from an earthquake, tornado, God forbid an active shooter, or a fire — those children, along with the staff, will be bussed from that location directly to the P.E. building at the College of Southern Maryland” in La Plata.

Officials are trying to adapt student ID cards to speed things up.

“We are currently working with our database partner, Synergy, and they have taken our model and suggestion to build a family reunification program inside of the ID cards,” Stoddard said. “So, if we ever do have to do a mass reunification, or a mass evacuation from a building, we can utilize their ID cards to check them in and move them around in the reunification process.”

As part of Maryland Matters’ content sharing agreement with WTOP, we feature this article from Michelle Murillo. Click here for the WTOP News website.

Did someone forward this to you?
Get your own daily morning news roundup in your inbox. Free. Sign up here.

REPUBLISHING TERMS

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected].

To republish, copy the following text and paste it into your HTML editor.

License

Creative Commons License AttributionCreative Commons Attribution
Charles Co. to Make It Easier for Parents, Kids to Reunite After Emergency