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 hard to ignore safety precautions given the increased frequency of risk at schools if you wish to stay safe. 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 team member allocations and the floor plan. Review the dialogue in the classroom and who is ringing doors. Be ready for unhappy students. The first step in each lockdown drill and in real lockdowns is to inform everyone of what is going on. Typically, a lockdown-specific alarm that plays during this process. When the alarm goes off, faculty and students ought to:
Clear the hallways and go to the closest available room. Stay outside if your class is outside. Observe the instructions of the person in charge of the room or the drill leader. Step 3 is to shut and secure the doors. Teachers must shut and lock all doors and windows in their respective classrooms after the hallways have been emptied. 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.
4. Count the students. At this moment, count the number of students in your class. Keep track of whether you have more or less than you expected. Notify the front desk staff or anybody else involved in the drill.
DIRECT STUDENTS TO THE SAFEST AREA OF THE ROOM IN STEP 5. Students must be shifted to the safest area of the room after closing the doors and windows, 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: Exit the field of view Everyone should move to the floor so that they are out of sight once they are away from the entrances and windows.
Step 7 is to close the blinds and turn out the lights. The likelihood of an active shooter entering the room decreases when the lights are turned off and cover is taken away from the door’s line of sight. 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: Wrap up the drill and summarize Declare the drill complete and hold a debriefing after it has been carried out and has passed staff inspection. 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 CIRCUMSTANCES To cover all scenarios, these drills should be performed multiple times a year during various times of the year. These possible active shooter circumstances consist of:
Throughout the intermissions when everyone is in the hallways before or after the start of the school day During lunchtime or recess for students (elementary school) READY YOURSELF FOR ANY CRISIS Being ready for any kind of emergency, especially one involving an active shooter, can be the difference between life and death. While using this step-by-step strategy can be highly beneficial, you should also think about alternative lockdown techniques that you could find useful when getting ready for a threat.
