Protection and Safety in Public Schools

Protection and Safety in Public Schools

Ipswich High School

As more and more school shootings and break ins are occurring, many school such as Ipswich already have plans and training for what to do doing an extremely dangerous event.  School was supposed to be a safe environment for children to go to learn. Parents shouldn’t have to worry if their child is coming home one day, but the way school shootings are going, it could always be a possibility.

We have many forms of protection here at Ipswich High; we have cameras, drills (lockdown, fire), and the staff has training. When I asked officer Smith as to why we haven’t had a lockdown drill yet, he answered simply the timing hasn’t matched up. The High School and Middle school have to do it at the same time due to sharing one building.

The safety at night is very high tech; all of the doors are locked and we have a very sophisticated alarm system. The alarm will actually track you through the school; it’s almost like the alarm system can see you and alert the officials to you location inside the school. In addition police patrol the school at different times during the night, and each cruiser has a key to the school in it.  

Also there is a knox box at the school to turn off the alarms, yet you need a pass code/ master key to get into it. Also, when I asked Officer Smith if we ever to have a situation here like the atrocities that occurred at Columbine what training or procedure would we follow, Officer Smith said that he has firearm training, practice taking down a shooter and a thing called incident command systems which is the schools, police and fire working together. Also every teacher has training to spot the children who demonstrate odd or out of normal behavior. To get prepared you have to train diligently. They want to buy some new stuff,  and get more security upgrades. They also want to have all doors locked and they want to have more upgraded equipment.