By Jill Vandale
My eyes scan across Branford High School’s written lockdown procedure: “All students and staff should move quickly to a safe area and lock it down. Doors should be locked, window and door shades should be drawn, and if possible, turn lights off. Students and staff in open hallways should get to the nearest secure area. This could include a classroom that hasn’t been locked, office, or exiting the building if needed…Once locked down and out of sight, everyone should wait quietly until you receive instructions from a first responder.”
At Branford High School – like 97% of all public K-12 schools – we have written plans on what to do in an emergency requiring a lockdown. The school holds monthly drills reading over these protocols and addressing the steps that should be taken in a dangerous situation.
However, there is still a lingering question in my mind: is this simple common sense enough? Right now, reviewing this written protocol is the only thing we do to prepare for an active shooter situation. When we run out of bullet points on that paper, how are we supposed to protect ourselves? Our school is ill-equipped to encounter a life-threatening situation, and won’t be able to keep us safe with only a simple list of procedures.
According to a 2006 national survey by the CDC, out of the 97% of schools across the country that have comprehensive plans for active shooter situations, 87% have provided training to faculty members during the preceding two years. While BHS is a proud part of the 97%, it doesn’t recognize that this is just the bare minimum. In the same year, a national survey of 750 school-based officers was taken. About half of the participants stated that their schools’ emergency plan is not adequate enough, and 67% believed that these drills were not practiced enough.
The sad truth is that we are nowhere near prepared.
Knowing exactly what to do in an active shooter situation is the first step to saving lives in a potential disaster. More formal training sessions should be implemented for staff, and even potentially students. If trained professionals directly provided students and staff with realistic simulation-like training, we would be far more prepared for a real-life scenario.
Last year, a mass shooter wandered the halls of Oxford High School in Michigan. Hours later, Michael Bouchard, county sheriff emphasized that the tragedy would have been much worse if students had not followed the proper instruction inside. The Washington Post elaborates: “Another image from inside the school showed desks piled up to barricade a classroom door. A bullet had pierced the door but did not hit anybody… the students followed the protocols they had been taught.”
This is only one instance that shows how preparedness can be extremely helpful in adrenaline-inducing situations like this to save lives. A principal from Ocala, Florida recognized the training these kids were following from her own implemented training at her high school: ALICE drills. ALICE (an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate) is a popular system used to inform students and teacher around the country of what to do in a dangerous school attack.
School is not always a safe place to learn and develop anymore; unfortunately, violence and fear keeps growing across the nation in the classroom. It is necessary to take precautions before it’s too late.
Although school shootings are a rare occurrence, it’s important that students learn proper protocol and gain more guidance; being overly prepared is better than being underprepared. Knowing what to do in a life threatening situation can help you remain calm when you want to freeze in fear. We at BHS need to stop relying only on bullet points on paper because, at the end of the day, that won’t be what will stop the real ones.
Editor's Note: Jill Vandale is a senior at Branford High School, class of 2023. The views expressed in this editorial are her own and do not reflect those of The Branford Buzz or of Branford High School.
