CALHAN — One of the first lessons Scott Brettell teaches his high school students is the importance of being last.
The last person to stay with someone through their last moments — even if only over the phone.
“You might be the last person that person ever gets to talk to,” Brettell told his students during a recent 911 dispatching class at Calhan Public High School near Colorado Springs. “I’ve spent time with people in their last breaths, sometimes on the highway, sometimes in their home. It just depends. It’s sad, but I’m actually thankful that I was able to be there for them to have someone there as they passed away.”
Brettell and about a dozen students are pioneering a new emergency telecommunications course in Calhan School District RJ-1 that gives students an entryway into a dispatch job they can pursue immediately after high school. The program comes at a time El Paso County is desperately searching for more dispatchers. It is among the latest efforts by rural school districts to tap into a pipeline of young people who can step into emergency response roles and help their communities cut down on the time it takes to connect callers with lifesaving help.
Other schools in both rural and metro parts of the state have rolled out their own programs in recent years to introduce students to careers in emergency response and stem workforce shortages: At two remote schools in Las Animas County, students have learned how to become emergency medical responders while Denver high schoolers have spent class time practicing CPR and checking blood pressure in preparation to work as emergency medical technicians.
In Calhan and other area districts, the focus is on the very first step in the minute-by-minute frenzy to keep someone alive and send them help: listening to their panic-filled pleas after they dial 911.
Through a broadcast device, Calhan School District — which has nearly 440 students in preschool through 12th grade — is expanding access to its 911 dispatching class to neighboring districts, Colorado Springs School District 11 and Miami-Yoder School District 60-JT. Nearby Ellicott School District 22 is also offering a 911 dispatching course and enabling students from Peyton School District 23JT to tune into each instruction.
The courses train students to become certified to take calls in a dispatch center, walking them through the procedures and protocols they need to calmly talk to a person in distress and direct emergency responders to a crisis. A certification takes 40 hours to complete, with students from each district chipping away at that requirement through two hours of class time each week.
Students will also learn customer service skills anchored by a sense of empathy, said Brettell, who reinforces to his class that they “have to be ‘Chick-fil-A courteous’ to these people.”
“These are going to be people having the worst day of their life,” Brettell, who doubles as Calhan School District’s school security officer, tells his students. “And you are going to be the one person that holds it all together for them and you are going to be the person that gets them help as soon as possible. But you also have to be the person that under really stressful situations is going to have to understand that you have to be cool, calm and collected and keep your composure through the worst of the circumstances.”
Brettell worked for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office for about 16 years, including running a work release program, patrolling and operating drones to locate missing people. Now as a teacher, he wants to both equip students with the basic information they will need to seamlessly deploy emergency resources and help them develop the endurance necessary to think clearly in a high-stress, high-stakes environment.
“Even though people are calling you on their worst day,” Brettell told his students, “the objective in dispatching is to make it go from their worst day to as best of a good day as possible.”
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Other times in class, Brettell opens up about his own experiences with saving lives on the job or comforting someone he knew he was losing.
He held their hand. He talked to them. He told them everything is going to be OK. He watched their chest rise and fall one more time.
“It sucks, but at least I got to be there to do it,” Brettell said. “If I was in a car accident and dying, I would hope that there’d be someone there to at least spend it with me, not be alone.”
Katelynn Tatman, a junior at Calhan Public High School, enrolled in the 911 dispatcher class because of her lifelong interest in criminal justice and an ambition to become a criminal profiler to help solve crimes by better understanding the psychology of offenders.
But at 18, she’s also getting mentally prepared for what she anticipates would be a demanding, emotionally wrenching job.
“I think with dispatching it’s probably one of those jobs where you’re going to have to take a step back and take some time for yourself because it’s going to be stressful,” Tatman said. “I know that before even taking the class.”
Phoenix Fail, a sophomore, hopes to work as a dispatcher in college while studying to become a forensic pathologist
“This can apply to you in real life, not just like a job,” Phoenix, 16, said. “This can apply to friends if they’re going through something.”
Why are teens a good fit for dispatching? They’re used to a fast pace.
Colorado Springs’ 911 Communications Center has long struggled to keep a full staff, with nearly 30 vacancies in October, according to The Gazette. The chronic shortages mean that instead of having 15 employees ready to take calls during the busiest times of the day — like the National Emergency Number Association standards recommend for that particular center — only seven or eight workers manned phones during those periods in the fall.
The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office has 13 openings out of 60 dispatch positions, with some candidates working their way through the hiring process, according to spokesperson Sergeant Marc Miller.
Call takers at Colorado Springs’ 911 Communications Center earn a yearly salary of about $57,680, which is one reason educators in Calhan and adjacent districts say dispatching is a promising option both for students who need a job while earning a college degree and for those who don’t necessarily look at college as their next step after high school.
Calhan Superintendent Dave Slothower started to see the potential in bringing a 911 dispatching class to his small district about a year ago, when he joined a group of local superintendents on a trip to Las Vegas to attend a conference focused on career and technical education. While there, Slothower visited Veterans Tribute Career and Technical Academy, where high schoolers can get a taste of a variety of public service fields, such as law enforcement, criminal justice and 911 dispatch.
“We were alerted to the fact that there’s a whole career and technical education pathway that we really hadn’t even explored,” Slothower said. “I think this is something we can replicate or should replicate. It’s a viable career path for our kids that they may be interested in. This is the beauty of it, is that you get the chance to explore these things right now while you’re still in high school.”
Calhan School District is continuing to develop its dispatch program with plans to construct a simulated call center where students can get firsthand experience with software used by dispatchers and practice fielding calls in a high-pressure environment.
Meanwhile, about 30 miles southeast of Calhan, students in Miami-Yoder School District are also learning about the mechanics of dispatching from Brettell, using technology to watch his lessons remotely. Their criminal justice teacher, Kevin Jaramillo, who also works as the district’s school resource officer, will get certified in dispatching later this school year and begin teaching students about handling 911 calls in future semesters.
High schoolers can quickly pick up the demands of 911 dispatching because they’ve grown up with technology and are used to “a fast-paced life,” said Jaramillo, who previously worked for the La Junta Police Department for nearly five years.
“Their minds are already going 100 miles an hour,” he said. “All they need is a little help tweaking and adjusting their mindset, and that’s to handle the screaming and maybe hearing gunshots on the phone.”