It could’ve been so much worse, Mona Dozier recalled.
It started as a typical fire alarm during the teacher’s business and information technology class of about two dozen sophomores and juniors.
Almost 2,000 students, staff and teachers spilled out of Kecoughtan High School in Hampton on Sept. 5 — near the end of the second week of school — and eventually gathered around the baseball and football fields.
Dozier said it didn’t take long to see it wasn’t another drill. The students were loaded onto school buses and taken to the Hampton Roads Convention Center with a police escort.
She remembers telling her students they had received a real-world lesson in adaptability.
City officials would later announce the arrest of a 15-year-old boy who was charged with bringing a firearm to the school and the removal of an unrelated “suspicious package” by explosive experts.
“At the end of the day nobody was hurt,” Dozier said. “Everything was done orderly, everything was pulled together. I thought the whole process was done excellently.”
About 35 buses shuttled roughly 1,800 students and staff to the convention center five miles away. Hampton City Schools Spokesperson Kellie Goral, who coordinated help from other city services, said some school staff who had the day off came in to assist and help reunite students with their parents and guardians.
In all, Goral said, about 1,500 of the students over five hours rejoined loved ones through one-at-a-time ID verification — and a lot of yelling. In some cases, according to Goral, students were driven home by those facilitating the response.
Meanwhile, the Hampton Police Division, the Hampton Division of Fire and Rescue, the Newport News bomb squad and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked the school. The gun was found in a regular security check, authorities said.
Later, students were invited to Kecoughtan to retrieve their belongings. When classes resumed that Monday, students and staff gathered for a debriefing, which school officials said served as a wellness check.
The 15-year-old charged is scheduled for a bench trial Tuesday after the case was continued from an October trial, the Hampton commonwealth’s attorney’s office said in a statement.
Goral said the evacuation was carried out not because of the firearm being discovered or the threat of a suspected bomb. It was so students wouldn’t be left out in the 90 degree heat during an investigation on school grounds.
“On that day, the systems that we had in place worked,” Kecoughtan Executive Principal Dwayne Lucas said.
Analysis on the national level suggest threats to and violence in schools have increased considerably after the pandemic.
Data compiled by the K-12 School Shooting Database notes a sharp rise in the number of school shootings across the country from 41 noted in 2015 to a peak at 351 in 2023. Violent incidents in 2024 and to date in 2025 are lower than 2023, at 336 and 208 incidents respectively, but those totals are still about double what pre-pandemic numbers show.
In Virginia, a 2024 audit from the Department of Criminal Justice Services’ Center for School and Campus Safety found a rise in the number of threat assessments by schools across the commonwealth post-pandemic.
The Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety was formed as a part of the Department of Criminal Justice Services in response to the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, James Christian, a manager at the center, said in a statement. Chiefly, the center streamlines training and emergency preparedness in schools.
“While it is true that the number of threat assessments reported by Virginia schools has increased significantly since the pandemic,” Christian said, “The increase may be attributed to a number of factors, including that teams are getting better at assessing and reporting the threats.”
He additionally notes that of the 24,357 recorded incidents in 2023-24 school year, just 2%, or about 487, were considered serious, he said. Most of the time schools activate their crisis management plans, it’s for medical emergencies, followed by off-campus incidents and vehicle crashes — as well as false alarms.
“We underscore whenever possible that school preparedness includes an understanding of the need for mental health supports, connection, and relationship-building,” Christian’s statement said. “VCSCS and schools prioritize student and staff mental health and well-being in a variety of ways including training like Bullying Prevention and Intervention, Pathways for Prevention of School Violence and Handle With Care.”
He said campaigns for some of these resources broadcast on social media, television and radio have reached over 43 million impressions.
Goral said the response to an incident on the scale of Kecoughtan, called by officials a “reunification situation,” involves more than coordination with first responders. Calls were fielded to transportation officials and food specialists and staff at the convention center, among other city services.
“I called our food and nutrition services director and said, ‘Hey I need to be able to feed 1,800 people in 30 minutes at the Hampton Roads Convention Center and I need water for everyone. I was met with a little bit of silence for a few seconds, but she jumped right on board, saying, ‘We’ll figure it out,’ ” Goral said. “Everyone was comfortable when they arrived.”
James Bailey, the security supervisor of Hampton City Schools, said Kecoughtan security officials are prepared for 35 different types of emergencies, from missing persons to medical emergencies to gas leaks.
The school system uses the Raptor Visitor Management System to scan visitors’ IDs. Thomas Shattuck, director of security and emergency management at Virginia Beach Public Schools, said in most cases there are also analogue backups to the security technologies in place.
Most schools mobilize two types of security personnel: unarmed officers employed by the school system and school resource officers who are assigned as needed by the Hampton Police Division. Kecoughtan employs seven security officers while other city high schools employ six, Bailey said.
All middle schools and pre-K through eighth grade schools have three security officers. As of 2025, a security officer is present at all of the school system’s elementary schools, which totals 19 new positions place in elementary schools.
Condensed materials of a master plan outlining emergency responses are shared with school staff, Bailey said, which regularly sees updates. The Department of Criminal Justice Services’ Center for School and Campus Safety in 2021 began voluntary programs called the Standard Response Protocol and the Standard Reunification Method intended to streamline emergency responses.
Christian said 97% of the state’s schools use these protocols which complement rather than replace existing crisis plans, emphasizing simple and plain language.
Individual schools have individual plans and designated reunification sites, Bailey said.
“It all depends on a whole bunch of factors,” he said. “Schools are different, with different designs of buildings, locations and size.”
Citing security reasons, school officials did not wish to elaborate on specific procedures. Shattuck said, in broad terms, most plans work off of an established hierarchy of needs. Logistical problems, he said, can exacerbate existing emergencies and the order of operations in a crisis makes a difference in its outcome, so roles should be clearly designated and defined as to not encumber the process.
Lucas said a variety of drills are routinely practiced with students and staff aimed at preparing them for an emergency. In Hampton, fire drills are conducted at least once a month. Multiple shooter lockdown drills are spaced throughout the school year. Drills that are not required may also occasionally be rehearsed, such as earthquake and tornado drills.
Before students began arriving at the convention center, messages began going out to parents and guardians, and the next phase began — reuniting the students with the people coming to pick them up.
“When parents are coming to get their kids,” Shattuck said. “You can’t hold them back.”
He said it is critical to maintain an accurate line of communication with them and other community stakeholders to prevent confusion and possibly escalate an already dire situation.
“Speed is the enemy of accuracy,” he said, and that in the first 10-15 minutes of an emergency, information officials have available is almost never accurate.
“Because of news media and social media, we hear about acts of violence in schools across the country more often than we would have. I can’t say there’s more violence now than there was 20-30 years ago but we do hear about it more and we’re more connected. It’s natural for our families to feel a heightened sense of concern when they hear that sort of thing.”
Police and emergency officials are trained to address the media and disseminate information with this in mind, Shattuck said. Goral said cell phones and technology have rapidly changed the way city and school officials must approach crisis management — gone are the days many emergencies fly under the radar with parents notified via student-delivered letters.
“No one calls the police when the barbecue is going well,” Shattuck said. “One of the most challenging things about school security is being proactive and not reactive.”
John Buzbee, 757-879-7421, john.buzbee@virginiamedia.com
https://www.pilotonline.com/2025/11/30/the-day-hampton-moved-a-high-school-in-just-a-few-hours/
