School safety: The evolution of the lockdown drill

This past April marked 25 years since the Columbine school shooting in Colorado that took the lives of 12 students and a teacher, not including the two shooters, students themselves who took their own lives.

For more than two decades area schools have been grappling with how to protect students from a similar attack.

Before state-mandated lockdown drills, some districts were already practicing locking internal and external doors and taking threats from students as more than just idle teen chatter.

But much has changed. Entire buildings and entranceways have been reconfigured, cameras and on-site police officers added and, in some cases, state-of-the-art software can now alert authorities to potential threats.

On top of physical security measures, schools have also added additional counseling services and support to help address potential mental health issues before they turn deadly.

How it began

Joseph Tripodo, Monroe-Woodbury School District’s director of security, noted that, historically, the school’s emergency planning focused on fire safety through regular fire drills.

“As a result, fire-related fatalities in public schools had become nearly nonexistent in the United States,” Tripodo said. “That being said, it had become clear that for schools to be equally as prepared for a possible occurrence of violence, expanded emergency response drills, including lockdown drills, were essential.”

In the early 2000s this reporter attended High Point Regional High School in Sussex, N.J., and experienced one of the first school lockdown drills in the district. An alarm sounded and our teacher ran to turn off the lights and lock the doors, while the students huddled low in a corner of the room. A janitor played the role of the intruder. He went around checking doors and making sure no kids were in the hallway. When he got to ours, he jiggled the handle, opened the door, and threw a tennis ball in our general direction. The lock hadn’t latched all the way, and as a result, our class did not survive the drill.

Mark Moglia, the chief of school police at the Delaware Valley School District in Milford, Pa., started training officers on how to respond to an active shooter back in 1998, eventually taking that training to the local student body.

He specialized in ALICE training: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate:

Alert: Become aware of the threat.

Lockdown: Barricade entry points.

Inform: If it is safe to do so, let others known the intruder’s location.

Counter: As a last resort, create noise, movement, or some kid of distraction to reduce the shooter’s ability to shoot accurately.

Evacuate: When safe to do so, remove yourself from the danger zone.

Variations of these types of drills still exist, but they have been supplemented with new tools and measures to further safeguard the student body. And while some schools did practice lockdown drills in those early days, they weren’t mandated by the state until much later.

Around 2010, the state of New Jersey mandated lockdown drills for active threats for all public schools. New York followed suit around 2016 and Pennsylvania in 2018.

Advancing safety

“Today’s drills are much more advanced,” Vernon Township School District Director of District Security Scott Waleck said. “Faculty not only lock down the room, they also move students to a perceived safe location within the classroom, are encouraged to communicate with a portable radio, if so equipped and safe, and they are instructed to consider other alternatives to keep themselves and students safe, if applicable.”

Waleck added that for Vernon schools, security cameras were first installed in the early 2000s and the district continues to update them or add more each year. He also noted that while the drills began at the high school level, they are currently practiced at all grade levels.

Schools also now have security entranceways or vestibules, which were installed in all Vernon schools prior to 2010, per Waleck. For secure vestibules, the idea is to stop a visitor from gaining full entry to the building by adding another set of doors beyond the initial entrance. The second set are locked and require a staff member or security card to unlock them.

According to Tripodo, over the last five to ten years, Monroe-Woodbury has added additional security measures such as door card access controls, new door locks for classrooms, window film covering on windows, visitor management procedures where visitor credentials are verified prior to admittance, roll-up security blinds on internal classroom and office doors, anonymous alerts and additional training for staff.

At the Florida School District in Florida, N.Y., cameras have been used for more than 25 years, according to Dana Castine, the district’s director of Instructional Services. Castine said that school resource officers have supported the district for more than six years and the process to install a physical security system began in 2018 and continued into 2019, including the installation of secure vestibules.

“We ensure that all of our lockdown and evacuation drills are trauma-informed, meaning we do not use tactics intended to mimic any emergency,” Florida School Superintendent Lisamarie Spindler added. ”All students pre-K through 12th grade participate.”

Jim Rice, High Point’s director of safety and security, noted similar upgrades. “Over the past several years, we have continually improved our security strategies, not limited to instituting an anonymous reporting system, and through guidance from the New Jersey Department of Education. We are compliant with Alyssa’s Law (requiring the installation of silent panic alarms linked to law enforcement offices) and utilize behavior threat analysis and management strategies.”

Delaware Valley, and several other area schools, use a visitor verification system as well. Moglia said the district has also reduced the number of ways people can enter school buildings, leaving outside entry relegated to only a couple of access points. Students and staff are also shown how to barricade doors.

The SRO

School resource officers are often trained police officers from a local precinct assigned to the school. Moglia said that he used to be the only one on duty for Delaware Valley when he started 17 years ago, but now the campus will typically have three officers during the day, and one after school.

SROs can be found at each of Monroe-Woodbury schools as well. In fact, every school district now has some form of police presence.

“We have always had the support of the New Jersey State Police in our school buildings through their school resource trooper program,” said Rice of High Point. “Our present security strategy, which includes retired police officers that are armed, was initiated through our Superintendent Dr. Scott Ripley and our Board of Education back in 2014.”

Waleck said Vernon also has armed retired police officers assigned to all district buildings. “They are trained in cooperation with myself and the Vernon Police Department and they are present whenever students are present” Waleck said. “Other building hardening processes and practices have been incorporated and we continually assess and evaluate our status to identify and negate any perceived vulnerabilities.”

In addition to on-site officers, many local police precincts and sheriff’s offices also practice drills with the school district, typically when students are not on campus, so that they know the layout and how to react if a larger response is needed.

Looking ahead

Security enhancements continue to evolve. The Delaware Valley School District just added software called Lightspeed Alert that monitors student communications for threatening language, or even discussions of self-harm, and alerts the school district.

“I’m always looking to improve (security),” Moglia said. “No one is 100 percent foolproof. I think we do a really good job at our school. We have to be vigilant, keep our eye out, investigate.”

Monroe-Woodbury’s upcoming Capital Project includes the construction of additional “secure vestibules” at school entrances. Some schools already have them in place, but the Capital Project will expand this safety feature.

Tripodo also said the district is working with the Critical Response Group to have “Collaborative Response Graphics Mapping” done at all Monroe-Woodbury schools and buildings, which is essentially a visual blueprint of the district’s emergency response plan to help improve communications among staff and emergency teams, if an incident were to occur.

Castine said the safety and security of students in the Florida School District “is a continuous conversation. We have safety plans that are living documents and are frequently reviewed to contain the most updated protocols and procedures. In addition to physical security, the district has bolstered its cybersecurity, enhancing an incident response plan in 2024. Information has been distributed at the classroom level to ensure that everyone knows how to respond.”

The best defense

Each of the responding school districts were also asked what they thought was the best defense against a school shooting today.

Monroe-Woodbury’s Tripodo said: Locked exterior and interior school doors, well-practiced school lockdown procedures by students and staff, situational awareness by students and staff, school resource officers, trained threat assessment teams, and anonymous tip lines.

Delaware Valley’s Moglia said the best defense is to work to prevent it. “The key is, if somebody hears something or knows something, you got to report it. Someone overheard kids talking at a game, for example, any suspicious behavior, you have to investigate it, you can’t just blow it off.”

High Point’s Rice reiterated that call. “Prevention is key, we are constantly developing relationships with our school community members so that they feel empowered to openly communicate their concerns with our school security team members as well as school administration and law enforcement personnel. We want our school community members to know that their concerns are important to us and the information gathered will be used to help keep everyone safe and able to freely enjoy their educational experience here at High Point.”

Vernon’s Waleck said: “The best defense against a school shooting is our awareness as employees. We have dedicated, trained threat assessment teams assigned to each building, as well as a district threat assessment team. The teams are comprised of faculty members, myself, administration and the SRO. Any concern is immediately evaluated and the appropriate action is instituted.

“School safety is an ever-evolving topic,” Waleck added, “and we will continue to improvise, adapt and overcome any concerns that confront us, as the safety of students and employees is always the foremost concern.”

A secure future

No school district in the area has had to endure the tragedy of a school shooting, but every year there are stories of hit lists, social media threats and precautionary lockdowns taken by these school districts in response. The key, according to our schools, is to take every precaution, implement every safety measure we can, and keep the lines of communication open.

More information about each school district’s safety plans can be found on their respective websites.