Alexander Higgins

Sept 18, 2011

Kindergarten and 1st grade students are now required by law to participate in monthly terrorism drills, including active shooter, bomb threat and evacuation drills.

I recently received my 1st grade students back to school paperwork. Going through the packet I found a letter serving notification that my son is now required by law to participate in monthly anti-terrorism drills.

In fact, after doing more research, I learned that all NJ schools which provide services to children from Kindergarten and up are now required by law to participate in monthly drills.

Schools must hold at least twice a year, in addition to the twice a month fire drills the following:

Active shooter

Evacuation (non- fire)

Bomb threat

and Lockdown

On top of those drills, schools will be required to also hold other security drills, which include the following:

Shelter-in-place

Reverse evacuation

Evacuation to relocation site

Testing of school’s notification system and procedures

Testing of school’s communication system and procedures

Tabletop exercise

and Full scale exercise

With a Full Scale Exercise defined by Law as:

Full Scale Exercise: This is a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional activity involving actual deployment of resources in a coordinated response as if a real incident had occurred. This exercise tests many components of one or more capabilities within emergency response and recovery, and is typically used to assess plans, procedures and coordinated response under crisis conditions.

The letter, which can be viewed here, reads as follows.

Brick Township Public Schools 101 Hendrickson Avenue

Brick, New Jersey 08724-2599

Telephone (732) 785-3000 Office of the Superintendent September, 2011 Dear Parent(s) or Guardian(s): The safety and welfare of our students and staff are our highest priority. To provide schools with the opportunity to practice emergency response procedures, it is necessary to conduct security drills as well as fire drills. The NJ Department of Educations has recently changed the guidelines concerning the frequency of these emergency drills. Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure. The school district is working closely with the Brick Township Police Department through our school resource officers to correctly implement these procedures. Our staff members have all be trained in our emergency drill procedures and are well prepared should we have to deal with a real emergency. The goals of the training drill are to improve our ability to protect students, save lives, and reduce injuries. They also allow us to evaluate our emergency operations plan and improve our response skills. In order to protect students, in case of an actual emergency students will only be released to the parents and/or other adults listed on the emergency information sheet. Please be sure that this information is current and accurate. It is a good idea to have several trusted adults listed with the school. This letter serves as notification that the Brick Township Public Schools will be conducting these drills in accordance with the NJ Department of Education Guidelines. The dates and times of the drills will not be announced. you would only be notified if there were a real emergency. If you have any questions or need further information, please do not hesitate to call your child’s school office. Sincerely,

Walter J Hrycenko Superintendent of Schools

Full article here

This article was posted: Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 5:55 am

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