Fayetteville High students practice emergency drills ! Shortened schedule for Homecoming leads to day of crisis management instruction
Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008
The day of the Fayetteville High School Homecoming Parade and football game could have also been called the Day of Drills.
The school conducted four emergency drills on campus during the course of the school day. These included an intruder drill, a bus evacuation drill, fire drill and tornado drill.
Principal Jim Price said that with the school holding an abbreviated schedule for Homecoming activities, it made sense to do the drills.
"We just clustered them all together," Principal Jim Price said. "We had to do them all, and it was kind of an abbreviated day anyway."
For the intruder drill, the classrooms went into lockdown mode and one of the school's teachers played the part of the intruder, Assistant Superintendent Ginny Wiseman said. The drill probably lasted 20 to 30 minutes, she said, and was set up by the School Resource Officers.
Wiseman said the drill was helpful in testing the school's preparedness and response to such an emergency. They identified some issues with the school radios which will be adjusted in the future.
The school has practiced lockdown drills before, but this was the first time they had someone play the part of the intruder, she said. The district plans to conduct another drill of this type later this fall at one of the middle schools.
The intruder drill was the only one of the drills conducted that is not required by the state.
"The intruder drill is not required. It was just something we thought of and the police department agreed would be a good idea," district spokesman Alan Wilbourn said.
Schools in Arkansas are required to conduct a fire drill at least once a month.
The state began requiring schools to conduct tornado drills last year.
Schools are required to conduct tornado safety drills "not less than four times per year in the months of September, October, January and February," according to an Arkansas Department of Education memo from September 2007.
The state requires that emergency bus evacuation drills be held at least twice a year.
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