The McFarland School District is committed to ensuring our students and staff are safe while in our facilities. In the month of September, each McFarland school reviews with students the protocols and procedures we have in place to ensure our students and staff are safe. Throughout the review, our message continues to be that schools are some of the safest places to be! We continue to remind our students that while these protocols are being reviewed in school, they are lifelong skills and responses that can be used anywhere should a safety concern arise.
This is a brief overview of the multiple components to our safety plans and approach. Here are a few highlights:
- Safety Drills and Responses to Safety Concerns: Along with many other schools and facilities across the country, the approach we use in the school district should a safety concern arise is called the “Standard Response Protocol” (click here for a description of each response and here for more information). We have monthly safety drills to practice each response with minimal disruption to the learning that day. Families will be informed of drills via the weekly newsletters. For lockdown drills, families will receive an email the day of the drill. In the case of an actual safety event, families will receive information that day.
- Reporting Safety Threats: Students are taught that if they are aware of a safety concern, they need to tell an adult through the “See Something, Say Something” reporting system. Reports are either directly to a trusted adult or using an online service called SUSO (Speak Up, Speak Out). SUSO reports are monitored 24 hours a day/7 days a week with school staff being trained to respond (click here to see where a report is made).
- Threat Assessment: Our student services staff members, administrators, and the School Resource Police Liaison Officer are trained on how to assess and respond to a threat that is made by a member of the school community to harm themselves or someone else using a well-researched national model.
- Building Security Measures: There are several significant actions that we take to keep our facilities as secure as possible, including secure entry, screening of visitors through the “Lobby Guard” system, communication tools, and more.
- Coordination: The district safety teams work closely with the McFarland Police Department as well as village and county emergency services to ensure we are prepared should a safety event occur. Together we have developed an annual training cycle.
Should you have additional questions about these components, please contact your child’s building administrator, who would be happy to answer additional questions you may have. Again, we recognize that schools are some of the safest places to be and want our students to know what to do wherever they may be, should a safety concern arise.
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