Residents and students in the Dover area now have two more safe havens in the case of severe weather. 

The Dover School District hosted an open house and ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday for the recently completed safe room at Dover Elementary School. 

The district hosted a ribbon cutting for the high school’s safe room, constructed at roughly the same time and actually completed after the elementary facility, in November. 

Superintendent Jerry Owens said the public reaction to the completion of the facilities has been extremely positive. 

“We’ve got a building rated for 250 mile-per-hour winds so people can make sure that — first and foremost that the students are safe — and also it’s available for the community,” Owens said. 

School board member Thomas Hill noted the facilities are equipped with a feature that automatically unlocks the building when sirens are activated. 

“You have to live fairly close, but with the weather we’ve had in years past, if you watch the forecast you can kind of track the line and know when it’s coming,” Owens said. “ It’s nice for people to know they have a safe place to go.” 

Owens said a large portion of the funding for the construction of the two safe rooms, for which the district received an original bid of $1,079,050 from Van Horn Construction in March, came from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding. 

“One thing a lot of people don’t know about, FEMA paid for 75 percent of this,” Owens said. “ We got a really, really nice room at only 25 percent cost of the local dollar.  It’s a really good deal for us to have those funds available, because they aren’t always available.  There’s only certain times when you can get those FEMA funds, so we were fortunate to get two of them.” 

Dover Elementary Principal Donny Forehand said the elementary safe room is expected to be used as a PE facility, holding area for afternoon pickup on rainy days, as well as other classroom and community uses yet to be determined. 

“Another thing the teachers have started doing is using it when they do labs,” Forehand said. “ They can come out here and set up and do the whole lab out here.  A class was doing a math activity a couple of weeks ago and they came out here because they were getting in groups.  You can do that and you can use these lines that are set up (on the floor).  It’s a big space we can’t fill with a lot.  We hope to get some chairs to keep up against the wall, but other than that we don’t want to fill it because it has to be ready for an emergency.” 

Forehand said he requested bids for LCD projectors, which would ease the waiting time for students should an emergency strike and could be utilized for training sessions both by the school and the community, and other technology. 

“If there’s an emergency, or when we come in here for a drill this room is packed — it’s wall-to-wall kids,” Forehand said. “ There was a tornado when I first started and we were in the hall for a good hour and a half.  We’d be ready to go and then we’d hear there was another one on the way.  So you never know how long it will take, so if we had an LCD projector we could show movies in here and of course, we could use it for training.” 

Forehand said the school has conducted an emergency drill utilizing the safe room, which went smoothly.  He said the school could add awnings to allow a dry walkway for students from the main buildings to the safe room. 

“I feel like we need to get some awnings out there because if we do have to use the room in an emergency it’s going to be pouring down rain,” Forehand said. “ The awnings don’t lead to this building.  We need that so they don’t get soaking wet.  When you have 500-plus kids walking in from the rain, their shoes are going to be wet, and then they’ll be sitting in a bunch of wet mess.  But the drill went really well.  We got them in and out.” 

Forehand also seized the opportunity while parents and community members were present to seek some feedback on possible uses for the building as well as a couple of academic items.  Five suggestion sheets were placed along the walls of the new facility with space provided for feedback. 

“One thing we’re asking is, ‘How do you think we can use it?’”  Forehand said. “‘ How can we get information out to the general public to know that when in an emergency and 911 system kicks in and the alarms go off, these doors will open automatically so the general public can come in here for safety?’  We want to get some feedback about how they think we can use the building publicly.  It’s a perfect space for training activities.  A lot of small businesses don’t have a big area like this, so if they want to do CPR training for their staff —here’s a great place to do it.  It doesn’t cost them, and there’s a lot of space to lay dummies down.” 

Other questions posted on the wall of the safe room were:

• Measurement is an area of concern with our student achievement.  How can we improve this skill to help our students become more prepared for work? 

• Practical text is an important skill in the workforce.  How can we improve this with our students? ( Recipes, graphs, directions and brochures.) 

• What can we do to get you as a business more involved with our school and our parent organization? 

• Character education is a life skill which transcends the school environment.  How can we together as a business and school provide students with a quality character education program? 

“Math is an area we have difficulty getting kids to excel in —measurements and geometry in the young grades,” Forehand said. “...  There are some things you can do to help with that — when you’re doing projects at home.  As a dad, I know it’s easier to say ‘Go ride your bike.  I’m working on the deck.’  But think about how you can show them how to cut boards and measure boards.  And helping with literacy can be simple things like helping to read a manual when you’re trying to put something together or helping mom in the kitchen.”