General Safety Practices & Procedures

  • Building Visitor Procedures

    We require visitors to present photo identification upon arrival at any of our school buildings. Using School Gate Guardian software, our buildings log visitors and retrieve data from multiple databases to help our employees make informed decisions about who to admit to our schools.

    Surveillance Camera Systems

    Cameras are positioned in our buildings and on school buses and are evaluated regularly and upgraded over time.

    Professional Development

    We provide teaching and learning opportunities for staff related to things such as A.L.I.C.E. Response Procedures (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) and steps to be taken in more general critical incident scenarios like severe weather events.

    Learning Experiences for Students

    Various drills such as fire drills, severe weather drills, and lockdown or evacuation drills are examples of measures taken by our schools to prepare students for an emergency. We recognize developmental differences among our K-12 students and attempt to tailor these trainings and drills appropriately in an effort to prepare students without frightening them.

    Open Invitation

    We want students to grow up seeing police officers as resources, not as individuals to fear. Therefore, we extend an open invitation to our police partners to visit and walk our buildings and interact with students and staff. We believe this to be critical to the promotion of healthy relationships between the school and law enforcement communities.

    Social & Emotional Support

    Our Comprehensive Plan includes a focus on addressing students’ social and emotional health, which ties closely to maintaining safe, secure school environments. The framework used for academic and behavioral interventions includes tiered systems of support, school-wide positive behavior plans, anti-bullying initiatives, and protocols for handling a concern.

    Administrative Searches

    As one facet of providing a safe and secure learning environment for our students, we take proactive measures to prevent illegal materials from being present in our schools. All hallway and gym lockers are the property of the school and are loaned to our students. Thus, school officials may search student lockers if the building administrator has a reasonable belief that a student's locker contains an article that is in violation of federal, state, or local law, school policies, or regulations. Per our school board policy, these searches may include the use of canine units. Any illegal materials found as a result of a search may be used as evidence against the student in disciplinary, juvenile, or criminal proceedings.

    Additionally, cars located in permitted parking lots are subject to search without additional prior notice. These searches may also include the use of canine units. The search of a student's person and personal property will be permitted when there is a reasonable belief that the student has on his or her personal items in violation of federal, state, or local laws. If a search requires a pat-down, the search shall be conducted by a designated school official of the same sex in the presence of another school staff member. The designated school official may use additional security devices to aid in the search. Our desire is that students continue to be part of the solution in helping to make our schools safe places to learn by reporting any illegal materials to an adult.