Mr. Jeff Decker has made campus safety one of his top priorities since taking on his role as Headmaster.  He has added many safety procedures for the teachers and students to follow but the one thing he wanted to address was the possibility of an active shooter situation on campus.  He requested “a big red button” to press in case of an emergency that would alert everyone on campus as well as our local law enforcement as fast as possible.  Working with the IT Director he implemented an online solution last school year called Lokdown that every faculty and staff have on their computers, phones and any other mobile device that has internet connectivity.  Today we conducted our first active shooter lockdown drill of this school year.  The results were better than last year’s drill and even better than expected.  In the past, to lock down the entire campus and to make sure every student is accounted for would take at least 45 minutes and sometimes up to an hour.  Here are today’s results:

 

Lokdown activated at 9:25am:

LokDown Active

 

Eatonton Police on Campus at 9:27am:

 

All students were safe and accounted for by 9:35am:

 

We would first like to thank the Eatonton Police for being on our campus in less than 2 minutes from the time the lockdown was initiated.  They literally descended upon campus to protect our students.  There were at least nine police cars and two ambulances on campus within 3 minutes.  Chief Lawrence and Howell Cardwell were one of the first ones on campus.  The entrance to our school was blocked so no one could flee the scene.  Every door in every building was physically checked and all students were accounted for in under 10 minutes.  That is an amazing response time thanks to our app coordinating the entire event.  You can learn more about it by visiting their website at www.lokdown.org.

Here are more photos from around campus this morning.