Students and staff will participate in the first safety day on Friday, Sept. 27, a half day, to practice drills and increase safety, according to Principal Douglas Nelson.
Students will practice seven safety drills throughout the course of the day. The drills include practicing a drop cover hold, severe weather, evacuation, reverse evacuation, lock down into shelter and shelter into lockdown. “Period 1 will start with a video from Principal Doug Nelson to set the tone and purpose for the day. He will give a brief overview of what the day will look like. Periods 2-8 will be dedicated to a different mandatory drill each period,” Assistant Principal Stephanie Labbe said.
Students and their families have speculated that the new safety day is in response to the three bomb threats that the school faced last school year. Despite the drills, an important change from last year is that students will no longer evacuate for a bomb threat unless it is considered credible. Statistics have shown that most bomb threats just seek to disrupt the school day and are usually not credible. Last year, “Students responded properly,” Nelson said.
Attendance will be taken for every class, but no instruction will occur. This combined with the half-day schedule leads people to believe that there will be low attendance. However, school leadership believes that the responsibility falls to the students. “[Students] have to really engage,” Nelson said.
Despite speculation about low attendance, students absent on safety day will not participate in the drills at a later time. Since most upperclassmen have already done most of the drills in past years, it is not crucial that everyone participates in order to remain safe, according to Nelson. Nelson said he believes that students should value their safety and want to do the drills, but the school can not force students to come on any given day.
Safety day does not mean that there will not be any drills later in the year. A fire drill, for example, is required by the state to be completed multiple times throughout the year.
The Parent Reunification plan is also in place this year, partly due to the student and parent response to the bomb threats last year. This outlines a plan for students and parents to meet up in an organized way in the lower gym after an emergency situation is over. The slides given to teachers say that it is new this year, but such plans have been in place since the 9/11 attacks, according to Nelson.
This school is not the first school to try this new safety day model. Seneca Valley had a safety day last year and students were not fans. “It was more chaotic than anything because of the amount of students not knowing what they were doing… it didn’t really deserve an entire day,” Seneca Valley junior Natalie Gussow said.
Nelson said he recognizes that it was not perfect at other schools. There is always more to improve and he hopes to “amplify it more,” Nelson said.
