Students Demand Action pen letter to students
The below letter was written by members of the Students Demand Action Committee and GMHS Administration sent to the student body.
In Falls Church City Public Schools, school safety is essential to all stakeholders – Students, Administrators, Teachers, Staff, Parents, and the Community. Currently, we are trained to go into lockdown if something happens in our school. However, incidents over the last several years have shown a lockdown is not always the best response to a safety concern in or around a school.
Falls Church City Police are introducing a new set of Best Practices being deployed across the country that provide more options and empower students and faculty in determining how to respond in an emergency. At FCCPS, we’re calling these skills “The First 12 Minutes” which references actions to be taken in an emergency before public safety arrives.
Since the beginning of this school year, the “First 12 Minutes” training has been provided to our middle and high school teachers and staff by Falls Church Police. They have taught teachers how to effectively participate in our own protection while leading students and others to safety. In an emergency, the response is divided into specific actions. These actions include an array of practices including Crime Prevention through Environmental Design, and the concepts of ALICE; Alerting everyone to the threat, Locking down or barricading a room, providing clear Information about the danger, Countering the threat as a last resort, and Evacuating when safe to do so. Keep in mind, these actions may not necessarily occur in a particular order, rather picking the safest response to the scenario at hand.
In addition to training on how to respond in an emergency, our secondary teachers and staff also received instruction on how to “Stop the Bleed” and refresher training on using the AEDs (automated external defibrillator) in our schools.
We are now ready to take the next step in our implementation – where middle and high school students and staff participate in the drills together. Again, these are much different from the old lockdown drills of the past where all students remain in their classrooms. In the “First 12 Minutes” drills, a practice threat will be announced in a specific location. The classes near that location will barricade themselves in their classrooms while classrooms away from that area will evacuate the building while avoiding the area where the practice threat was announced.
As we begin the transition to these new more effective drills, they will be announced in advance to ensure that everyone knows that it is a drill. Central Office staff, including social workers and psychologists, and Falls Church Public Safety will be on site for the exercises. The first Mason drill will be on Wednesday, March 27, at 9:30 a.m, and the Henderson drill will be on Thursday, March 28, at 9:45 a.m.
Training for elementary school staff and drills at the elementary level will occur in the future. Each of the exercises will be customized by the school with developmentally appropriate information and practices.
In addition to working with FCCPS, Falls Church Police has trained St. James School and other organizations in our community. Below are two videos for further information: The first is a news story on the “First 12 Minutes” initiative implemented in our community and the second is a video produced by FCCTV on the First 12 Minutes training at FCCPS.
News Video on Falls Church First 12 Minutes Initiative: https://www.localdvm.com/news/
FCCTV Video of FCCPS’ First 12 Minutes Training: https://youtu.be/WC-AZco0h5g
If you have any concerns about the information or the drill, please contact Mr. Hills or, if more comfortable, feel free to contact the Students Demand Action leaders (Kaia Jefferson, Elly Loyd, Amanda Byrne, Eleanor Kay, Ciara Curtin, or Rachel Doornbosch).