District Heightened Security Parent Letter
20 September 2024
Greenback Families:
With the advent of a new school year, I know that safety and security are often on the minds of parents.
For us, it is a top priority to keep our students and staff safe—our own kids are in our schools. This is just
a brief overview and feel free to ask questions of your child’s building principal or myself.
We work with local law enforcement, which includes our school resource officer, and a Crisis Planning
consortium through our local education service center (ESSDACK) in Hutchinson to develop and vet our
crisis planning for various scenarios.
If you keep up with news around the state, you will occasionally hear about a lockdown or heightened
security situation occurring at a particular school or community. Some make the news and some do not.
Here’s our approach.
We are hypervigilant on potential security issues, so we have a low threshold for going to Heightened
Security. Issues could include but are not limited to a local law enforcement issue (offsite law enforcement
concern), a vague, non-specific threat, a custody dispute, etc. When we go to Heightened Security, we
lock doors and limit student travel out of classrooms to very specific, administrator-determined periods.
We beef up presence and security at entrances. We continue to instruct and advance classroom goals.
In this age of cellphones and social media, we know that information, often inaccurate, will begin to filter
out. We coordinate immediately with law enforcement in these situations and we do not want to hinder
their work or put out false information ourselves…remember, this is often springing from something vague
and uninvestigated (at that point) in nature. We will put out what we can, but depending on the nature of
the issue, we may refer that to local law enforcement and their publications. Even if it doesn’t rise to a
media issue, we will put out an information letter following the event. During a potential Heightened
Security situation, parents may still pickup and drop off students for appointments, etc.
We reserve a Lockdown procedure for a more immediate and pressing safety concern—those protocols
are a more robust response to protect student safety. We appreciate our local law enforcement and their
partnership in enhancing student safety. During a crisis (weather, gas leak, security, etc.), our approach
is to fully support law enforcement, allowing them to be at their peak effectiveness. With this in mind, we
are directing all resources towards protecting students. We jeopardize safety and lose our ability to
account for each student if we would release students (except as an emergency procedure) during a
lockdown protocol. I believe we maximize safety when school personnel and parents maintain calm in the
face of a real or potential crisis/concern. We have an “emergency management” tab on our website
(www.usd382.com) that goes live when we have a current message and will be a repository for critical
information updates during an emergency management scenario.
During the year, we are likely to have a weather event that disrupts our dismissal or bus schedule.
Weather is notoriously difficult to predict but our goal is to make a decision and inform parents with
enough time to adjust to an adapted dismissal or bus plan. We will put out a message with any changes
and use our school messenger service and our social media platforms.
Respectfully,
Tony Helfrich