What is emergency preparedness?
MDHS has taken steps to ensure your child’s safety while in school. In consultation with the Office of Catholic Schools, police and fire departments, our school has developed a crisis response plan. Emergency preparedness is basically preparing the steps you will take in the event of an emergency, such as contact information, communications, and evacuation plans. Drills will occur unannounced throughout the year to ensure the plan’s effectiveness.
How will my child’s school handle an emergency situation?
The flexibility of the MDHS plan is key to the success of the response. In general, our plan involves the designation of a crisis management team; development of evacuation, Shelter-in-Place, and lockdown procedures; preparation of a portable critical response kit that contains key information and supplies; provisions for training personnel and updating the plan; checklists for dealing with specific types of incidents; and resources for help before, during and after an event. MDHS plans have been reviewed within the last twelve months, and our school crisis team has received training.
What is lockdown?
An emergency may prevent the safe evacuation of a school building and require steps to isolate students and faculty from danger by instituting a school lockdown. In an interior lockdown situation, all students are kept in classrooms or other designated locations that are away from the danger. Faculty members are responsible for accounting for students and ensuring that no one leaves the safe area. School personnel will also secure building entrances, ensuring that no unauthorized individuals enter the building. Parents may be permitted access to the building and to pickup their children if it is safe for them to do so depending on the specifics of a lockdown.
In the event of a terrorist attack or other emergency
situation, will MDHS go into lockdown?
The specific actions taken by MDHS in any emergency situation will depend on the specifics of the situation. Any action taken would depend on several factors, including the level of threat and the advice of Office of Catholic Schools, local, state, and federal agencies. The safety of students and staff members will be the primary concern in any decision. Prudence will be exercised in making the decision.
What is Shelter-in-Place?
Shelter-in-Place is a short-term solution to a
short-term problem. If an accident or
attack that created contaminated air occurred in the nearby area, everyone
would be brought indoors. Building
personnel would close all windows and doors and shut down the heating,
ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC). This would create a neutral pressure in the
building, meaning the contaminated air would not be drawn into the
building. Shelter-in-Place
is a short-term measure (measured in minutes or hours, not days) designed to
use a facility and its indoor atmosphere to temporarily separate people from a
hazardous outdoor environment. The
alternative would be to evacuate into a hazardous situation, thereby causing
harm to all involved. No stockpiling of
water and food is needed for Shelter-in-Place. Any event of a magnitude that
required such stockpiling would require that we all take our direction from the
federal emergency management officials.
Parents may be concerned that, during a Shelter-in-Place
activity, they couldn’t pick up their children and might be separated from them
for long periods of time. That will
happen if the air outside the school is not safe for parents to breathe, then
it is not safe for their children to breathe.
MDHS has developed a plan that uses the best possible method for
ensuring the safety of students and staff members in this type of crisis. Remember, it is not the school’s intention to
keep children from their parents. MDHS
personnel are merely endeavoring to keep children safe until parents can pick
them up.