Superintendent's Message

District One Schools has procedures to insure that we do everything we can to keep our schools safe. These procedures are reviewed regularly and safety drills are held on a regular basis in all schools. This school year, as part of a routine review of administrative procedures district-wide, district leadership chose to focus on school safety. We have been working with local law enforcement agencies and a safety consultant to do a thorough review of our schools' safety procedures. Our schools have formed safety committees that have been meeting regularly and administrators have participated in simulated exercises to assist them in leading their schools in case of an emergency.

Each school conducts a series of safety and precautionary drills at the beginning of the school year and on a regular basis. Your children are very familiar with fire drills, regular tornado and earthquake drills, bus evacuation exercises, bomb threat drills, and intruder drills. Our teachers and staff expect students to take these drills seriously and they do. As part of our review of safety procedures, many of these drills have been practiced recently.

We have established procedures with local fire departments and law enforcement and have evacuation procedures in place, as well as "safe locations" for each school. Local fire departments and law enforcement have conducted drills in our schools and maintain information about the layout of each school. We use school camera systems and available technology to aide us in exchanging information with different agencies.

All staff members are trained to speak to and ask for identification of anyone they see in schools. Visitors are asked to sign in and wear name badges. We also have established procedures for signing students in and out of school and identification of those with authorized business in our schools.

High schools, middle schools, and the career center have full time School Resource Officers. Elementary schools have School Resource Officers who are available to assist the school staff.

Please understand that for security reasons, we cannot publicize all our procedures and steps that are taken during drills. Please check your child’s agenda for our policies on visiting our schools and other procedures. Please make sure that the contact information we have for you and your child is updated frequently.

District One Schools, working with our students, staff, and community agencies, will continue to practice safety and take all precautions that are available to us. We ask for your support and encouragement.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

Sincerely,

Ronald W. Garner, Ed.D.
Superintendent