Hastings schools, both public and private, will see increased police presence for the first weeks of school in the wake of the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis last Wednesday.
While there is “no indication of any direct threat to any school in our area,” said Hastings Police Chief Dave Wilske, Hastings police will provide a higher presence around local schools especially as the school day begins and ends.
This effort by Hastings police is mean to provide “peace of mind,” to residents, students and district staff.
The day of the shooting, school resource officers were sent to the ongoing freshman open house at the high school due to a “heightened concern,” said Wilske.
The event, however, played out without issue with incoming freshman and their families welcomed into the high school to tour the building, finding their lockers and getting familiar with the pod-layout of the school.
In the commons, booths from Spanish club to cross-country skiing to archery displayed the many extracurricular options available to students.
National Honor Society raised funds from the event through their annual bake sale. The members smiled up behind ‘Great Value’ cookies and prepackaged treats. Due to recent changes to district policy, the group was unable to bake their own goods to be sold.
Despite that, members said the sale was already raising funds towards the group’s various activities throughout the year.
The event was also an excuse for High School Principal Scott Doran to show off the building’s new antomage table that students will be using across various science classes including the new Healthcare Professions class beginning this year.
Doran posed alongside ‘Victor,’ the nickname for one of the five cadavers stored in the table. Detail scans of the bodies from skin to bones to nervous systems can be swiped between to let students see the different layers of cadavers which are able to be moved and manipulated.
Details of those cadavers from cause of death to abnormalities within their bodies are noted. For Victor, who died of pneumonia, a tumor along his spine can be seen when examining his skeleton.
The table has a number of functions beyond dissection with experiments and activities ranging from playing air hockey with variable friction to visualizations of entering a black hole.
It also features a number of other cadavers and details scans ranging from cats, dogs, and iguana heads to owl pellets.
“We’ve opened up maybe three percent of what’s in this thing,” said Doran.
While the school plans to continue ordering some real cadavers like those of cats for its anatomy class, the table offers a potentially wider array of cadavers as well as a replacement for some of the materials previously used in classes.
Over the course of the next week students across the district would come back into classrooms with freshman and fifth graders coming a day early on September 2 to the high school and middle school respectively.