Contact: Nick Jaskiw
231-690-5649
Issued as a Service to the Manistee County School Business Cooperative
by the Alliance for Economic Success

For Immediate Release

Manistee, Michigan – At 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 21, 2008, a small group of people convened at a cemetery in Lansing, Michigan to dedicate a brand-new, pink granite headstone for a 9-year old girl, Marjorie Fritz, whose headstone was paid for by a kind-hearted social worker after hearing that Marjorie’s final resting place was unmarked.

Marjorie and 44 others died in the Bath School Disaster on May 18, 1927, when a disgruntled person blew up the Bath Consolidated School, one of the largest mass murders in U. S. history.

A shooting rampage.  An explosion.  Acts of violence.

Unfortunately, 81 years after that horrific event in Bath, unthinkable community tragedies that result in injuries or even loss of life happen in our nation’s schools.

“Not in this School” is a statement of denial that, unfortunately, can be one of the greatest enemies facing schools throughout the nation, state and, yes, in Manistee County.

The creation of a preventative action plan for Manistee County schools is the theme of a “Preventing the Unthinkable” seminar, scheduled for June 9-10, 2009 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Manistee High School.

Organized by the Michigan State Police and the Manistee Intermediate School District, the seminar is designed to help school administrators, teachers, community and business leaders address issues for preventing and responding to tragic community events and for having plans to recover in the event the “unthinkable” happens.

The two-day seminar includes presentations about: 

• The ircumstances and lessons learned from a school attack on a rural Amish School in Pennsylvania
• How to debrief people who have witnessed a tragedy to prevent post traumatic stress disorders
• Ways to work with media during critical incidents
• Characteristics of people and conditions that pose threats to schools
• The roll of school resource officers in reduce threats to our students and schools
• How to organize to make quick and sound decisions in the event of a school attack
• Ways to prevent school attacks, including introduction of a curriculum that can result in less school violence and higher test scores