by Lindsey Valdiviez, photo by Hannah Bredar

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which 20 first graders and six adults were fatally shot with three semi-automatic firearms, the STA administration decided to immediately carry out their formal lockdown drill plan. According to Principal of Student Affairs Mary Anne Hoecker, the administration formulated the plan this past summer, but executing the drill had been postponed due to tight scheduling.

“We were going to do a lockdown drill this year anyway,” Hoecker said. “We would have done it the first week of school, but the tornado and the fire drills took up time.”

Hoecker said that though STA has always had a crisis plan, the administration has begun to look for other ways to make STA more secure during school hours since Sandy Hook. President Nan Bone said that faculty and staff will have safety training with Homeland Security in February. Coded keypads will be placed on the north door of Donnelly Hall and on the door in the back of the M&A Building. Any and all visitors will be required to wear a nametag obtained from Ms. Kelly Drummond and Ms. Julia Berardi’s front offices.

“I think [nametag identification is] a good thing for other people to recognize that they’re actual visitors and that they’re not just roaming the halls,” Berardi said. “It’s hard, you can’t always see everybody that goes by especially if I’m on the phone or if I have kids in here.”

The administration is also investigating convenient and updated locks for each individual classroom. All doors, including classroom doors and doors on the outsides of the buildings, will no longer be propped open.

“We have just decided we don’t want to prop doors anymore,” Hoecker said. “We will give delivery persons key codes for these doors for a short window of time. The Sandy Hook shooting has made us look at what more we could do.”

However on Jan. 29 during Period 3, 28 of 43 total classroom doors were propped open, not including office room doors. Hoecker had no comment on this fact.

Though STA had its first formal lockdown drill Jan. 4, according to Hoecker, lock-down drills do not yet have scheduled dates. Rather, the administration plans on notifying students the week a drill will take place. Hoecker believes that having drills at various times of days will be beneficial because it will test students instincts in different situations and locations.

In lock-down drills or in a legitimate situation, the administration encourages students to be quiet and abstain from using cell phones. If every student at STA used their cell phone at once, “they could take down the tower,” meaning a cellular tower would stop working and the police might not be contacted in time.

“[Students] can’t use their cellphones because if 600 girls were on their phones, they could take down the tower, which is what Homeland Security told us,” Hoecker said. “And we don’t want mass chaos from students anyways, and we don’t want students to think they can flee.”

Bone said that during the day, Mr. Rafael Ramirez, Mr. Gil Mont and Mr. John Palacio watch over everything that happens. At night, Mr. Bob Wessling waits until every person leaves the school grounds.

“[Ramirez, Mont and Palacio] will also approach people and are a way to watch for us too,” Bone said. “We also have security at night until the last student or teacher leaves, and that will always continue.”

In addition to a formal lockdown plan, Hoecker said the administration has an evacuation plan. Hoecker says this would only happen if the administration were to declare evacuation of the school grounds as the best option in a particular situation.

“We’ve contacted various places around the area for a situation in which the students would have to evacuate the school,” Hoecker said. “We just want students to follow the directive of the adults.”

Hoecker says that ultimately, the administration will assess any and every crisis situation and decide which plan of action would be most suitable for student’s safety.

“There is no perfect safety plan,” Hoecker said. “I guess as perfect as you can get is to make the best decision at the time with what is going on.”