It’s crucial to practice school safety to be ready for any issue that might occur at your school. Schools go into lockdown during any emergency to protect the safety of the faculty, staff, and students. In an emergency, conducting lockdown drills in an effort to be prepared could make all the difference in everyone’s lives. This past year, the number of school shootings reached historic highs, and regrettably, it is expected that this trend will continue through the end of the year. It is impossible to ignore safeguards if you want to keep safe at schools due to the increased prevalence of risk there. Every school needs its own lockdown procedures to follow in case of an emergency. However, schools might use the detailed lockdown drill below as a model to follow.
Schools must inform staff and students about lockdown drills, including what they are, when they will occur, and who is responsible for what. Staff members must be able to identify the sort of drill they are performing. Make sure everyone involved is aware of the context of each practice before it takes place because lockdown drills and evacuation drills differ from one another. To be ready effectively, personnel should:
Review the floor plan, team member assignments, and any knocks on the doors. Be ready for classroom conversation and student discomfort. The first step in any lockdown drill or real lockdown is to inform everyone of what is happening. Typically, a lockdown-specific alarm that plays during this process. When the alarm goes off, faculty and students ought to:
Step 3: CLOSE AND LOCK THE DOORS After the halls have been emptied, teachers in each room must close and lock all the doors and windows. If your class is outside, stay outside. It would be more difficult for attackers to enter any room if there were an active shooter inside the building as a result. Teachers and staff frequently manually lock each classroom’s doors. An automatic lockdown system with automatically locking preventative doors might be a preferable choice, nevertheless.
Step 4: Count the Students At this point, count each student in your classroom. Keep track of whether you have more or less than you expected. Notify the front desk staff or anybody else involved in the drill.
Students must be relocated to the safest area of the classroom after the doors and windows have been shut, away from the windows and doors and toward the interior walls. This can be practiced in a drill to help pupils get used to an automatic response and make sure there is a direct route to the room’s safest location. Move to an evacuation side if your classroom is outside or anywhere else in the building.
Step 6: GET OUT OF THE LINE OF VISION Following the removal of everyone from the doors and windows, everyone should squat to the ground to get out of the way.
STEP 7: TURN OFF THE LIGHTS AND CLOSE THE BLINDS By turning off the lights and ducking out of the way of the entrance, you can give the impression that no one is in the room, which reduces the likelihood that a shooter will enter while active. Intruders cannot see into the room if all the window blinds are closed, which again makes it more difficult for the active shooter to identify a target.
STEP 8: CONCLUDE THE DRILL AND DEBRIEF Once the drill has been completed and has passed staff inspection, make an announcement that it is done and hold a debriefing. During the debriefing, the school should go through any problems that occurred, their solutions, and the overall effectiveness of the practice. This is the chance to polish the drills so that everybody is more ready when the time arrives.
SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS To cover all scenarios, these drills should be performed multiple times a year, at various times. These possible active shooter circumstances consist of:
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