M. Safety and Security
Reflection: Since I have been a K-12 student, the safety and security of students has unfortunately become more of an issue. Forming security plans is just pone measure a school leader can take to ensure their building is safe. Like any plan, practice is key and making sure that other leaders are educated on how to effectively execute it is essential. Our district mandates a specific number of a variety of drills be performed regularly. Administrators keep data on these drills to see if and where improvements can be made.
Scheduling meetings to allow staff to voice their concerns about these drills or how they were performed critical. It is hard to administrators to be everywhere at once and their staff have a first-hand account of what was happening during the drill. One instance that comes to mind is a memory back from when I was in high school perform an intruder alert, lockdown drill. A student raised some concern about a specific part of the plan that he felt was somewhat senseless. While hiding behind locked doors from a possible threat, teachers were instructed to slide and green or red card under their door to indicate if they have all their students. To my fellow student, this seemed to be an obvious sign to the intruder that there were in fact people trying to hide safely behind the door. I am still unsure if this student’s statement was a contributing factor to the plans being altered, but the following year teachers were no longer placing the colored cards below their doors. Regardless of this fact, I would like to think that the teacher took their student’s concern seriously enough to bring to their supervisor. This is a very powerful lesson for leaders to never underestimate the voice and perspective of any individuals within your school. |
Competencies:M1. Demonstrating the ability to develop and implement policies and procedures for safe and secure educational environments;
M2. Demonstrating the ability to formulate safety and security plans to implement security procedures including an articulated emergency chain of command, safety procedures required by law, law enforcement assistance, communication with the public, and evacuation procedures; M3. Demonstrating the ability to identify areas of vulnerability associated with school buses, buildings and groups and formulate a plan to take corrective action; M4. Demonstrating understanding of procedural predictabilities and plan variations where possible; M5. Demonstrating the ability to develop plans that connect every student with a school adult, eliminate bullying and profiling and implement recommended threat assessment procedures. |