The Park Hill School District recently has joined hands with community representatives to bridge gaps in its emergency response plan.

The meeting, attended by about 75 persons, united administrators, teachers, students and parents with local police, health officials and parishioners. It was the first such gathering aimed at introducing details of software that will link emergency responders with critical information about each of the district's 15 schools in case of a crisis.

The district began planning for the program about a year ago and learned in October that it had won more than $185,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to pay for the program.

“I almost have this superstitious feeling that when you're prepared, you don't need the plan,” Superintendent Gayden Carruth told the crowd.

Presenting the program was Marti Wagner, vice president of implementation at Prepared Response, the Seattle company that produces the program Rapid Response.

Those who attended looked at grim scenarios for school shootings, fires, tornadoes and chemical releases. Their conclusion: Planning is the key.

Over the next few months, officials will start bringing their emergency response information into a single database that could be accessed with an Internet password. The program will link responders to all the district's schools — in addition to St. Therese, a Catholic school, which the grant required the district to include.

Each school's database will be broken down by building, and each building page will contain about 300 data points and almost as many photos. Someone who's never set foot in Park Hill High School could theoretically click on the school's link and find maps to all the exits and fire doors. The science rooms would be identified with a list of chemicals inside, alongside photos of their containers and explanations of their properties. And each school would list key contact people and provide photos of each for quick recognition by responders.

“If a guy comes up and says, ‘I'm Mike,' and he doesn't match his mug shot,” Wagner said, “you might want to know that.”

Upcoming meetings will lay out tactical information such as where to put roadblocks, where to evacuate each school and where to designate incident command sites. The grant will help schools align their plans with others, said district spokeswoman Nicole Kirby.

The meetings also will identify a spokesperson from each school to handle media and parents.

The district spans an area of about 74 miles and overlaps the boundaries of Kansas City and eight other governing bodies. Fire and police responses can't be chaotic, said Paul Kelly, assistant to the superintendent.

Wagner said Prepared Response had just finished a web of databases that connects the more than 400 high schools in the state of Washington. The state's legislators had approved $3.5 million for the project.

Wagner recounted one of the program's most famous saves, in which responders used a Spokane school's database to fend off a high-school student threatening to fire a loaded handgun. While 35 buses arrived and removed about 900 students from campus, other responders were able to shut off gas to the science room where the assailant sought refuge.

Prepared Response workers this summer will put information for the Park Hill School District into the database for a startup next fall.