P.E.I. schools work to ensure 'lockdown drills' don't traumatize students

While many students in P.E.I. are comfortable with "lockdown drills," school officials are taking extra care to make sure students with phobias, or children who are refugees, aren't traumatized by the process.

"The lights go off in a drill, so if you have a student who happens to be frightened by the dark, or if you have a student who is new to P.E.I, and have come from refugee situations, who may be frightened by the act of being told to be quiet and to stay still, something like that, " said Julia Gaudet, director of student services with the English Language School Board.

New students including those in kindergarten are informed beforehand exactly what happens in a lockdown drill.

'Calm and non-alarming'

"The process itself is very calm and non-alarming," she said.

Gaudet said teachers are encouraged to give feedback on the drills, particularly if a child seemed upset.

"We would spend a lot of time with our new little ones in kindergarten and talking about why we might be doing this, because it's important to listen, and 'Have you ever needed to stay still?'" she said.

"The conversations around this obviously grow a little bit as kids get older. We're wanting them to understand the seriousness of it. They're also starting to question the need for it, so the conversations sometimes do take on a little bit of a heavier tone."

Annual security sweep of every P.E.I. school

One of the concerns back when the first drills began was the lack of proper locks or no locks on some school doors.

"We recognized at the time that we had some areas that needed to have a few tweaks here and there with respect to locks being fully operative, the appropriate blinds on windows, windows in the doors, making sure our buildings were conducive to exercising a safe drill," Gaudet said.

"We've also had a series of upgrades to our cameras, and our visibility and sight lines in the building."

Every year, administrators are required to submit their floor plans as well as any updates or structural changes. With those floor plans, the zones that are considered safe zones are identified and that information is forwarded to anational registry, which is managed by the RCMP.

RCMP can access electronic floor plans

The registry has a bank of electronic floor plans through which police can access any school in Canada.

When the procedure was first introduced in 2008, there were many questions from parents, including how the information would be communicated.

Gaudet said it's up to each school to decide which is the most effective way to get the information out some schools use newsletters or put the information in the school's handbook. Other schools may post the information to their websites.

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