School Lockdown Notifications

[Anonymous]

Does MCPS have a communication standard in advance of or following a school lockdown drill? Specifically, are principals required to notify parents these drills have occurred and how the drill was explained to students?

[Anonymous]

Nope. Ask your child to mention it to you if it happens. He/she will possibly remember.

[Anonymous]

We have received an email from the principal afterwards.

[Anonymous]

Are you just talking about drills? Or actual lockdowns?

[Anonymous]

OP- mention whether your kid is in es, ms or hs. My recollection is that we knew about them in advance for es but not for ms or hs. By the upper levels, kids have gone through them annually and a note home probably isn't important. I think the notification from the es principal was just in a routine correspondence, like their weekly message.

For kindergarten, I recall a note from the teacher with the information you are mentioning-- i.e., how it was framed for kids. (for my oldest dd, the teacher told us that they told the kids to pretend they were hiding from dinosaurs (!) but for my other kids, they gave more accurate information, but it was quite vague and also done in the context of weather drills, etc so it seemed kind of routine to them. fwiw, none of my kids came home upset about it in ES

I think parents also received some advanced notification even from the ms when they did a drill shortly after Parkland.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Appreciate the responses.
This is for ES. First drill. No notification from principal or teacher which I find unacceptable for ES. Schools and parents should be aligned on how these types of drills are explained to our ES children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Appreciate the responses.
This is for ES. First drill. No notification from principal or teacher which I find unacceptable for ES. Schools and parents should be aligned on how these types of drills are explained to our ES children.

I never recieved anything for a fire drill. I think you need to let that go. I would be more concerned about active shooter drills and ES kids. I do not think they really talk about shooters specifically..just a dangerous situation in the building. It might have become more specific in recent years though (sadly).

[Anonymous]

No, they don't give notification as they want to do real world incident.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Appreciate the responses.
This is for ES. First drill. No notification from principal or teacher which I find unacceptable for ES. Schools and parents should be aligned on how these types of drills are explained to our ES children.

Parents should explain to children as they see fit about these drills before any drills happen. The school isn’t going to try to craft an explanation that suits all parents, because that isn’t possible. There is standard wording read with the drills to explain them (often state law or state department of education drives exactly what is said.

You may want to prepare yourself that there will be other things you don’t get to control what is said to students at school, including the mandatory health education courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Appreciate the responses.
This is for ES. First drill. No notification from principal or teacher which I find unacceptable for ES. Schools and parents should be aligned on how these types of drills are explained to our ES children.

Parents should explain to children as they see fit about these drills before any drills happen. The school isn’t going to try to craft an explanation that suits all parents, because that isn’t possible. There is standard wording read with the drills to explain them (often state law or state department of education drives exactly what is said.

You may want to prepare yourself that there will be other things you don’t get to control what is said to students at school, including the mandatory health education courses.

My child’s third grade teacher had students read a book that included one character calling another character the “n” word. Parents were not made aware. I can’t believe we weren’t given a heads up on that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Appreciate the responses.
This is for ES. First drill. No notification from principal or teacher which I find unacceptable for ES. Schools and parents should be aligned on how these types of drills are explained to our ES children.

Parents should explain to children as they see fit about these drills before any drills happen. The school isn’t going to try to craft an explanation that suits all parents, because that isn’t possible. There is standard wording read with the drills to explain them (often state law or state department of education drives exactly what is said.

You may want to prepare yourself that there will be other things you don’t get to control what is said to students at school, including the mandatory health education courses.

My child’s third grade teacher had students read a book that included one character calling another character the “n” word. Parents were not made aware. I can’t believe we weren’t given a heads up on that one.

They read Twain in 3rd grade?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Appreciate the responses.
This is for ES. First drill. No notification from principal or teacher which I find unacceptable for ES. Schools and parents should be aligned on how these types of drills are explained to our ES children.

Parents should explain to children as they see fit about these drills before any drills happen. The school isn’t going to try to craft an explanation that suits all parents, because that isn’t possible. There is standard wording read with the drills to explain them (often state law or state department of education drives exactly what is said.

You may want to prepare yourself that there will be other things you don’t get to control what is said to students at school, including the mandatory health education courses.

My child’s third grade teacher had students read a book that included one character calling another character the “n” word. Parents were not made aware. I can’t believe we weren’t given a heads up on that one.

They read Twain in 3rd grade?

I don’t think it was Twain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, they don't give notification as they want to do real world incident.

I agree that later in the year, it's a real world incident (in fact, the principal doesn't even know it's coming-- they get a surprise call from central office to see how things go without planning. But the first one of the year I think is very planned. They basically walk kids through what's going to happen (where they should go, etc.)

I agree that fire drills are no biggie but I'm surprised if school didn't give parents a head's up about an active shooter/lockdown drill. If they aren't communicating that, then it sounds like the principal needs to reassess the whole communication strategy. We had a terrible principal who was fired after years of parent complaints-- a big one was lack of communication with parents. (And the principals since then have really gone over the top with communication!)