Drill scare prompts lockdown changes
Officials announce new procedures at Seminole schools to avoid panic
The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and school district unveiled new lockdown procedures Friday afternoon, months after an unannounced exercise at Lake Brantley High School led students, parents and teachers to fear an active shooter was targeting the campus.
Going forward, the district will announce all emergency drills to students, staff and parents before the exercise starts. The district also said it had implemented “consistent messaging” to ensure everybody in the school is notified of the drill.
“Over the past several weeks, our organizations have collaborated on developing new procedures related to emergency drills, to ensure that our schools continue to be a safe environment for everyone,” Sheriff Dennis Lemma and schools Superintendent Dr. Walt Griffin said in a joint statement.
The new procedures come two months after an unannounced drill at Lake Brantley sparked panic, prompting some students to jump over fences and flee through nearby neighborhoods.
On Dec. 6, a voice came over the school’s intercom announcing a “Code Red,” which indicates the presence of an immediate threat, such as an active shooter. Students weren’t told that the announcement was just a drill, and parents weren’t told about the drill until the school posted a Facebook message nearly an hour later.
A second announcement the same day, which thanked students for their behavior during the exercise, came while some students were in the cafeteria. Due to noise, some said they heard only the words “Code Red,” causing a frenzied stampede.
The miscommunication was exacerbated by the absence of the school’s principal, Dr. Trent Daniel, who was away at a district meeting during the exercise, schools spokesman Michael Lawrence said in December. The exercise was timed to coincide
with his absence in order to mirror the circumstances of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which took place while that school’s principal was also away from campus.
The new procedures include “several layers of communication redundancy at the school and district level to ensure all stakeholders have advance notice of emergency drills as well as timely notice of real-world incidents should one occur,” the statement said.
The school will still have lockdowns, which are mandated by state law. During the lockdowns, doors will be locked and students will have to seek refuge in “safe corners.” However, the students will be told the drills are not real-world threats.
“To keep our students, faculty, and staff safe we committed to placing school safety at the forefront of our agendas years ago, and we share that sentiment to this day, even as the environments and threats have changed,” Lemma and Griffin said.