On Friday, March 11th, we will be practicing a LOCKDOWN drill, also known as an Active Threat drill. An active threat situation occurs when someone poses an immediate threat to the life and safety of learners, staff and visitors inside our school or on our school campus. An example of this could be an active shooter, someone brandishing a knife, a suspicious unknown person, etc.
During an active threat situation learners, staff, and visitors must take decisive and immediate action to find safety from the threat and create time barriers that allow first responders to stabilize the situation. Unlike drilling for less rapidly evolving emergencies, action must be taken quickly and smoothly, with coordination and purpose. Therefore, it is critical to practice and train the appropriate responses in order to gain confidence and understand how to safeguard learners, staff and visitors during such an event.
While we know it may cause anxiety for us to contemplate such a scenario, it is important that we train ourselves how to properly respond rather than react. We want to gain confidence and understanding of the situation and the tools and technology we use during this type of event so we become emergency prepared rather than being emergency scared. During these drills we will NOT use any type of simulated gunfire, smoke or role players. We will simply provide instruction, practice, and learn how to respond by going through the actions we want to duplicate during a crisis.
During the Active Threat-LOCKDOWN drill we will be supported by School District Security, School District Administration, Law Enforcement, and Fire/EMS personnel who will assist us in checking doors and classrooms and coaching us through the process. This is important as all of them will have a part in responding to help. Each drill should take approximately 30 minutes as we practice all aspects of our emergency procedure.
At the conclusion of the drill, our building Safety Team will debrief the drill to discuss lessons learned and provide us with strategies to improve our response. We invite all staff and learners to provide feedback and ask questions about the process so that we can continuously improve our practice.
Thank you for participating with us in this important training event so that we can help keep our school and our community of learners, staff, and visitors safe. Please feel free to contact us at info@coloradoskiesacademy.org if you have any questions.
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