Lockdown Drills Becoming a More Common Part of School Calendar

Lockdown drills becoming a more common part of school calendar Where fire drills seek to get everyone outside and away from an interior danger, lockdowns keep everyone inside and away from an outside threat, said Dr. Matt Ryerson, director of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative here.

“Lockdown drills are becoming much more common,” he said.

“When they are in the classroom, teachers are focused on education and rightly so. But we need these safety-first reminders, too,” he said.

Those drills turned real in recent weeks in both North Georgia and Southeast Tennessee.

When a bear and two cubs were spotted near Ringgold Elementary School, administrators secured the doors.

Just before Christmas, Cleveland High School went into a lockdown when an armed robber fled from a nearby pharmacy.

“Georgia state statute requires all schools to have a school safety plan to address policies and procedures for all disasters — natural or otherwise,” said Dana Tofig, director of communications for the Georgia Department of Education.

That planning is overseen by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Todd Keys, a GEMA specialist, offers technical assistance to 38 North Georgia counties as they develop emergency plans.

He is working now with Walker County Schools to conduct a tabletop exercise in advance of a full-scale drill.

“I recommend schools have practice drills, and they do quite often,” Mr. Keys said.

He said he meets with principals and school safety teams and walks though the building, discussing safety issues. The school officials then put together a safety plan in coordination with the central office.

“Every school needs to be on the same sheet of music,” Mr. Keys said. “For example, a substitute teacher needs to know what to do because she may have been in a different school yesterday. And kids move up in grades to new schools. They need to know what to do.”

Tabletop drills like the one coming up in Walker County allow time to stop and question at any stage, he said.

“It’s hard to do that later at a full-scale, boots-on-the-ground exercise,” Mr. Keys said.

Jodie Grannan, principal of Charleston Elementary School in Charleston, Tenn., said she and student resource officers Doug Towne and Melanie Johnson organized a practice lockdown after the Cleveland High School incident.

“It’s important that students be aware of what to do if we had an emergency,” she said.

There were many questions to consider from the beginning. What about substitute teachers in the building? How to secure pupils who may be out of class and in hallways? How to get children to act without raising anxiety?

“We have fire drills once or twice a month, and we want to do this at least two times a year,” she said.The drills may seem like a sad commentary on the times, but they are a smart idea, Bradley County Fire and Rescue Chief Dewey Woody said.

“You have to think outside the box,” he said, referring to the Georgia bear scare.

That’s why Safe Schools/Healthy Students commissioned a New York security firm to assess each school, said Troy Spence, county Emergency Management Agency director.He and local law enforcement officials and other emergency agencies worked with the consultants. They even staged a full-scale intruder drill at Walker Valley High School complete with students spending a Saturday to act out the scenario.