Safety Guidelines and Emergency Response Plan

This year Edgewood City School District will adopt the Standard Response Protocol (SRP) for its safety response plan.  The concept is simple - there are five specific actions that can be performed during a safety incident.  Students in grades PreK-12 will be trained, drilled, and practice each of the five specific responses:

HOLD! - Students remain or return to their classrooms.  Doors are locked and it is business as usual inside the classroom.  Bells are disregarded and students remain in the classroom until the "all clear" is given.  A HOLD! may be called for a medical emergency in the hallway, a spill, or basically any incident that just needs to be analyzed and addressed without causing undue alarm by calling for a lockdown.  A HOLD! is a great starting point for any emergency situation and can be easily escalated to another response as the situation evolves.

SECURE! - Something may be going on outside of the building.  Students are brought inside and outside activity is restricted,  exterior doors are locked and attention is paid to the exterior of the building.  A SECURE! may be called due to an unknown or loose animal on the property, or a police incident in the neighborhood.  It is business as usual inside the building with an increased situational awareness of the incident taking place outside.

LOCKDOWN! -  A lockdown will be called when there is a clear threat inside the building.  Students and staff will shelter in the classroom with doors locked, lights off, and out of sight.  Students will be prepared to evacuate or defend.  Lockdown is the most serious of the protocols and will only be used for confirmed threats inside the building.  There will not be varying levels of Lockdown (level one, two, instructional, emergency, etc...).  

EVACUATE! - Students will be trained to evacuate to specific locations based on the reason for the evacuation, with the most common being a fire drill.  

SHELTER! - Students will be trained to shelter for different reasons with the most common being severe weather.  Students will be trained to either stay put or move to a specific shelter location based on the reason for the SHELTER!

 With the Standard Response Protocol (SRP), students will use a common language from the time they enter school until they graduate.  SRP is also widely used by colleges, businesses, and many places of work.  By adopting SRP, Edgewood students will be better prepared for safety scenarios as they move through different phases of their life.  We do not only want our students to be safe in our schools, we want to give them skills to be safe for the rest of their lives!

Since we are adopting a new safety response plan, all buildings in the district will exercise the same drills during the same week, once a month for the entire year.  During weeks that we are conducting safety drills, the district will communicate with families so that families can discuss safety protocols at home and we will also share photos and stories as the schools conduct their safety drills.  We want parents to take comfort knowing how serious ECSD takes student safety!