Safety Procedures
If an emergency occurred at one or more of our campuses, anyone included in the district student notification list will be emailed a message of the situation and you will be advised on what to do regarding your student. You will be given updates when possible and you will be notified via email when the event is over or provided information on how to pick up your student. Parents and guardians are automatically enrolled in our ‘Skylert’ email notification system when registering for school but must opt-in to text alert notifications. Visit our Text Messages page to learn more about receiving text messages from Midlothian ISD.
In an emergency, our full focus and efforts must be on the safety of our students and staff and on the successful resolution of the emergency. With this in mind, please do not come to or call the school. We realize that the normal parental urge is to come to the aid of your child, but in an emergency situation, you will not be able to help and may even become a hindrance. It is vital that, in an emergency, the campus concentrates its resources towards the students and staff that are involved in the emergency. If those resources have to be diverted towards concerned parents who have come to the school or are calling, then those resources are not being used fully towards the emergency at hand.
The Midlothian Independent School District realizes the importance of good and timely communication with our parents and the stress an emergency places upon each one of us. In the event of an emergency, parents will be kept informed as much as possible and as fast as possible via the Skylert system. Parent communication may include a text alert, voice message or email. When a community update is needed, MISD may post information on the district website, the MISD Facebook page, or Twitter.
Safety Drills
MISD attempts to prepare for a wide variety of emergencies. All staff are trained in the proper method to respond to each emergency. Every school conducts at least one emergency drill per month and often one or more additional drills. The drills that we practice are: Fire, Hold, Lockdown, Secure, Evacuation, and Shelter-In-Place.
The following is a brief explanation of each safety protocol:
- Hold: Initiated when there is a need for the hallways to be clear while staff attend to a need inside the building (i.e. providing medical assistance to an individual). Staff and students remain in classrooms and continue with normal classroom activities and learning.
- Lockdown: Initiated when there is an immediate or imminent threat to the occupants of a school. Lockdown isolates students and staff from the danger by severely restricting movement with-in the school. Lockdown is used to prevent intruders from entering occupied areas of the school. Lockdown is a "no one in, no one out" scenario.
- Secure: Initiated to alert staff that there is police activity taking place near the school but not on school property. All exterior doors and access points are secured. The staff maintains an appropriate level of situational awareness and is prepared to implement additional emergency actions. School activity with-in the building can proceed normally.
- Fire Drill: The orderly movement of students and staff from the school building to another area when conditions outside are safer than inside (i.e. fire drill).
- Shelter-In-Place: Implemented to isolate students and staff from the outdoor environment and provide greater protection from external airborne contaminants. This procedure includes closing and sealing doors, windows and vents and possibly shutting down the building's heating/air conditioning/ventilation system to prevent exposure to outside air (i.e hazardous material spill in the area of the building). Activity with-in the building is not restricted and can proceed normally.
- Off-Site Evacuation: The orderly movement of students and staff from the school building to a staging area where they are then transported by bus to the district off-site evacuation facility.
