Lockdown LBPS Info 01-10-19

Over the past few months we have all seen
instances of delays in the implementation
of a lockdown or shelter-in-place. These oc-
currences have resulted in delays ranging
from a minute to not even being conducted.

One of the observed hurdles is that staff

members don’t know what to do or how to

use the tools that the LBPS provide. When

One Size Does Not Fit All staff were asked what concerns they have
about security drills, they say the lack of

It is obvious that there is no “one size fits communication and what to do.

all” solution to school lockdowns and secu-

rity protocols that will work properly in every It is important to provide staff
school. Why not? Because procedures

must reflect the individuality of each school the tools they need to keep their
as differences in design and ages of stu-

dents. We have discovered that what looks school/building secure through-
great on paper does not always work in re-

ality.

out the school day.

Some of our schools, High School and

George L. Catrambone, have difficult times

in getting a cellular signal in some locations.

Well, the district has installed CrisisGo on

every desktop computer. However, it is im-

portant that staff members sign into the

desktop version at least once, then from

that point forward they will automatically be

signed in every time they start-up the com-

puter. It is also important that staff conduct

the daily updates to the application on both

LBPS Toolbox their cell phone and desktop every day. Cri-
sisGo syncs with our student database

Michael Salvatore, Ph.D., superintendent of every morning.

schools along with the board of education CrisisGo is an amazing lifesaving tool, but
have provided all employees of the district it is not our only tool. It is vital that all em-
with a lifesaving tool at their fingertips. Cri- ployees know the procedures and what
sisGo is by far one of the best ways to com- other tools they have to assist them during
municate with staff during an emergency. an emergency.

CrisisGo empowers all employees regard-
less of title, education, or department with
the ability to enact a number of emergency
protocols. It not only allows everyone to ini-
tiate an emergency response, but it also
gives step-by-step directions on how and
what to do.

It is an application that employees can

download to their cell phones. Yes, it takes

up a little bit of space on your phone, same Following are some lessons learned from
as a game of Word Nut or Solitaire. But it school security assessments that have
also provides staff with class rosters and been conducted nationwide. Although this
emergency contact information on stu- is not a complete list of considerations, ex-
dents, all Long Branch Public School em- perts have found these to be among the
ployees, maps of schools, and has a most common opportunities for improve-
Training Center and Safety Center which is ment when conducting a lockdown.
loaded with videos and tutorials.

1. Don’t focus all of your efforts on active learned.
shooter situations.

2. Schools that only have one type of lock- Don’t focus all of your attention on active
down procedure are more likely to have shooter situations. It has been proven that
their plan fail during a crisis. if you focus on active shooter emergencies,
you will have a higher fail rate during other

situations.
3. Don’t use codes, they can result in fatal-

ities.

4. All staff should be issued keys, partici-
pate in staff development and be a part of
the lockdown drills.

5. Doors should be locked during instruc-
tional times and when the door is not ac-
tively in use.

6. If they are not trained with staff-initiated Lockdown for an
drills, individual staff members and teachers Active Shooter:
are less likely to respond effectively during
a crisis.

7. Basing the lockdown decision on the lo- CrisisGo has an alarm/alert for an active
cation of the threat instead of the nature of shooter that every employee can activate.

the threat can be dangerous. Every employee has been given a district
lanyard with a whistle. Once an active
8. Reverse evacuation protocols and drills shooter alert has been activated on Cri-
are critical. sisGo employees should immediately blow

9. Conducting drills at arrival, lunch and dis- their whistle to get the attention of others
missal are VERY important and always who didn’t hear the CrisisGo alert. Whistles
overlooked. are only for lockdown to an active shooter,
if you can or don’t have time to activate the

10. Room clear protocols are so critical for alarm, blow the whistle.
a safety.

When you hear the whistle, blow yours and

So, let’s examine what we here in Long follow lockdown procedures.
Branch do in regard to these 10 lessons

LBPS Why is this new? In the past the Long
Whistles Branch Police would be dealing with a situ-
ation (not on school grounds) and the offi-
to be blown for cer would tell the dispatcher to call a
Active Shooter particular school and tell them to lockdown.
However, some schools might have been
Lockdown left out of the notification process and
maybe a lockdown was not required as
shelter-in-place would have been justified.

Other tools for activating an active shooter Dr. Salvatore and Long Branch Police Chief
lockdown besides CrisisGo and the whis- Jason Roebuck worked out an arrange-
tles…the Public Address System and just ment where the PD will provide as much in-
yelling “Active Shooter-Lockdown” formation as possible for the administration

to initiate the proper procedures at the cor-
We also know that there are other times rect locations.
when it will be important to lockdown a

classroom, it could be a medical emergency While it is normally good to keep things sim-
in the hallway and you need to keep it clear. ple in school crisis planning, it has been
Or, it could be a disturbance that you need found that schools that only have one pro-
to clear the area. tocol based on active shooter situations suf-

That is why we practice “Shelter-In-Place” fer high failure rates, as some are averse to
which can escalate from a non-threat to a overreacting in a situation they feel is too
serious threat. “minor” to warrant a school lockdown or
shelter-in-place. This type of thinking can

allow a situation to escalate into a deadly

NEW for event because an early opportunity to lock-
down or shelter-in-place is missed.

2019 Having that lower level, “preventive” or

“soft” shelter-in-place option is important

because most situations where lockdowns

are needed do not involve weapons.
If an emergency/crisis occurs outside of our

schools and the Long Branch Police are in-

volved, they will contact Dr. Salvatore or his

representative and inform them of the inci-

dent allowing the administration to deter-

mine what type of action is required by the

LBPS employees.

Codes can kill. Plan failure has occurred in little guys do the same job as the magnetic
actual events and in evaluations because strip.
school staff members often confuse differ-
ent codes when they are used in a crisis.
One study found that 22% of school district
accidentally ordered lockdowns instead of
sheltering procedures in response to
weather situations.

One administrator at a school ordered a

“Code Purple” which did not exist in any of

the districts plans. So, we here at the Long

Branch Public Schools no longer use Classroom teachers are advised to design

codes, we speak in plain language. That and install coverings for the classroom

way everyone in a building knows what is doors. These can be individualized and

occurring. often very inexpensive. During a lockdown,

they pull the magnet (of the already locked

LOCKED DOORS door) and then pull or close the door shade.

Did you know, that only once has a locked
classroom door been breached and a fatally
occurred during an active shooter incident.
That shooting took place on March 21,
2005 at Red Lake Senior High School in
Minnesota.

The safest place to be during a school
shooting is in a locked secured classroom.
What we have done here in Long Branch
was purchase door magnets which cover
the latch. Doors are always locked, and
during a lockdown all the staff member
needs to do is remove the magnet and
close the door. With the magnet in place the
door can easily be pulled or pushed open.

The magnets seem to be disappearing from
schools and the district does not have any
in stock. Office supply stores sell Magnetic
Push Pins, a bag of 20 is $21.00 and these

of sight from the door window.

Establish a In the event of a lockdown, you now know
SAFE ZONE the specific area of your room that is safe
from view from the exterior. This is the area
both you and any other students and staff
will need to occupy in a lockdown.

Now take a look at this area carefully. Do

you have the necessary resources and sup-

Teachers need to know that preparing their plies within the safe zone to keep staff and

classroom for the long haul or the worst students calm and safe? Consider the fact

possible occurrence can prove to be a life- that when students are not calm, they are

saving action. They need to establish a safe not quiet. When they are no quiet, they are

zone and do it by: simply not safe from a potential threat in the

area.

1. Step outside the classroom and close the

door. So ask yourself, “how can I keep students

calm for a long period of time?” Undoubt-

2. Look into the classroom through the door edly, the thought of keeping them occupied

window. Look at all angles and identify comes to mind. Does your safe zone have

those areas you simply can’t see. Note a the necessary resources to accomplish

landmark in the room to assist, and mark this? Resources such as:

the area with something; tape on the floor,

so students know where they can hide out computer workstations to play games or

stream content books and

other activities games toys

that can be played with qui-

etly.

An essential element of
lockdown is not only se-
curing staff and students
behind closed doors, but
also keeping them calm
and quiet. No small feat
when you consider young
children, special needs

students or those stu-
dents and staff who sim-

ply panic.

very important and “Highly” recommended
by the NJ Department of Education. It is
also strongly suggested that all staff mem-
bers train in the use of mass notification.
CrisisGo has the ability to notify staff
quickly, and should be initiated by different

Everyone needs to train.

The threat that indicates the need for a staff members when you drill.
lockdown often takes place in parts of the
school away from the main office. This Basing the lockdown decision on the loca-
means that it is important to hold drills tion of the threat instead of the nature of the
where different staff members are required threat can be dangerous.
to make the decision to initiate a school
lockdown without consulting with anyone. When the location of the threat is used to
decide on where and who to lockdown, ex-
While the timing of the drill should be deter- perts say that most schools suffer with an
mined by the lead administrator, individual 81% fail rate. The main reason is that it is
staff should be required to make the lock- very difficult for employees to quickly decide
down decision after being prompted with a what area needs to be secured.
scenario. While many people assume that
the staff will perform how we want them to The nature of the threat should always be
in an actual event, the incredible stress of the priority in deciding what to do. For ex-
a crisis has extreme effects on the human ample, a parent is in the main office, be-
body. comes agitated and quickly pulls out a knife
and starts waving it around. The school in
How many of our staff members here in this scenario has three floors, would you
Long Branch know how to use the public lockdown the entire school or just the first
address system? Do they know that they floor.
can access the system from their cell
phone? Have you ever had a secretary or If you base your decision on the location of
teacher conduct a lockdown drill? the threat, and only secure the first floor the
decision might result in injuries of students
Drilling at arrival, lunch, and dismissal are or staff coming down from the second or
third floors.

room, cafeteria or media center. This pro-
cedure allows a staff member to quickly and
safely send students to a pre-determined
area nearby where they will be supervised.

Lockdowns, sheltering procedures for se- When a school-wide evacuation is ordered
vere weather and other critical lifesaving for an active shooter situation do you recall
protocols cannot be implemented as rapidly how to exit the school?
if there is no mechanism to promptly return

students who are outside to the building in Everyone leaves with their hands over their
an organized fashion. While most staff are heads, hands open with palms facing out-
familiar with the basic concept of a reverse ward. No objects in hand.
evacuation, very few understand it as a for-

mal procedure and often delay action while

considering what to do when they need to

return to the building quickly.

When the threat is inside the building, you
don’t want to bring students who were out-
side into the school.

Room clear protocols and Return to normal activity

back to normal activity Here in Long Branch we have several
methods to get our staff to return back to

Schools must have a mechanism to quickly normal activity. First method is using the
clear students from a room where there is CrisisGo application. The administration is
a threat. One district uses the room clear able to communicate with all staff members
procedure to send students to another part sending out a message. If staff are unwilling
of the school quickly during a small crisis to download the application on their cell
that does not require a school-wide evacu- phone or have poor reception in their
ation. For example, when a student or staff school, the district has placed CrisisGo on
member has a medical emergency in class- every desktop computer.

Second method available to return to nor-
mal activity is the public address system.
Remember, we need the 2-Person all clear
method when using the PA to end a drill or
event. When using the PA the person must
give their full name and title.

If you hear only one person, stay in lock-
down. If you hear two people but they give
the wrong title, stay in lockdown. Only re-
turn to normal when two voices are heard
with proper names and titles.

Third method and one rarely used is the two
way radios. The 2-person identification is
still required when using the radios.

Only time that the 2-person identification
would not be required is if you receive the
message over CrisisGo.

Visual inspections of the district parking lots

show that many vehicles are not registered

The Long Branch Public Schools require or are not displaying their parking permits.

that every employee register their vehicle The parking permits are a mandate from

with the Security Department. Employees the NJ Department of Education, please

will then receive a parking permit that must make sure that you are in compliance.

be displayed in their vehicle while parked

on school grounds. Vehicles that are not properly registered, or

parked in non-parking areas; fire zone,

Permits are assigned to individuals, so you loading dock, curb side, will be issued a

can move it from car to car. However, if it is parking violation.

lost you must contact the security depart-

ment right away.