Now a month past the incident, an active shooter hoax akin to others seen in Utah and across the United States, the PCSD board of education and Provo Municipal Council on Thursday met to discuss an after-action report.

The report, presented by Jason Garrison, the district’s director of student and family services went over the observed strengths and weaknesses of the school’s staff and first responders in response to the active shooter alert.

“Police, along with the first responders, took about 17 minutes to clear the entire building. Even with getting notified it was a hoax, they still are expected to follow through with the protocols of checking doors, checking buildings, checking bathrooms, and more. They still made the effort to check every classroom door and make sure it was locked, and they were all locked. We are very proud of that,” Garrison said.

The school board and district have made a concerted effort to ensure all teachers and staff know lockdown procedure, especially the importance of locking doors and covering windows. 

Marci Harris, Special to the Daily Herald

“They can approve hundreds of thousands of dollars of infrastructure and security, but all it takes is one teacher to leave the door unlocked or propped open. … So training culture, that’s the part that we’re really focusing on now,” Garrison said. 

Police have determined that the active shooter hoax call came from outside of the country, based on tracking the IP address. The voice that called schools across the country was a male with a foreign accent, claiming in some messages that there was an active shooter in the building and in others that there were already casualties. Similar calls were received around the same time that day Spanish Fork and Ogden high schools, along with schools in Pennsylvania, Oakland, Seattle and more.

Master keys to open classroom doors were not needed in this situation, as officers only needed to ensure doors were locked, but when they were going through the standard lockdown protocol, there was a delay in getting the keys. This, Garrison said, was due to the number of keys made and that only a few officers knew the code to the police station’s safe.

Plans made to strengthen future responses by Provo’s first responders included making and distributing laminated maps of the school buildings, distributing more copies of the classroom master key to first responders and creating an app where teachers can mark their classroom safe or unsafe for first responders to see in real time. 

Superintendent search

The school board also informed the Provo council that they have narrowed down the pool of candidates after the first round of interviews and visited remaining candidates at their place of work to observe their work ethic and relationships with coworkers.

Gene J. Puskar, Associated Press

“We are now finishing our deliberations and finalizing some details. We should have an announcement really soon. Our goal to announce the new superintendent has always been May 1. We’re still on track for that, there may be a few days plus or minus either direction but that’s still our target,” said Rebecca Nielsen, school board president.