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September 5, 2023
Dear Parents:
Your student's safety is always our first priority at school. If you are new to Prince, we traditionally conduct four lockdown drills a year; each semester has one announced and one unannounced drill. When we conduct these drills, we have Oconee County law enforcement officers on site (often inside and outside our buildings) to provide an objective, third-party evaluation of our performance. For your knowledge, the sheriff's office has keys to our school, classrooms, etcetera, and can also see imagery from our campus cameras on their cell phones before arriving on campus.
We are blessed to live in a low-crime county with quality law enforcement officers; however, it is critical that our faculty and students train how to make the best decisions in the first three or four minutes should a campus intruder be reported. Reports from campus safety pundits are replete with facts on the importance of a school community's performance during this brief, critical window of time, so we focus a great deal of our safety training on these few minutes.
Today, we held an announced "soft" lockdown drill. Soft lockdown drills are one safety step below a lockdown drill. Soft lockdown drills allow students and teachers to move freely within a building, but a teacher or staff member must escort students if they are walking between buildings. We periodically practice soft lockdown drills at the beginning of the school year before conducting a traditional lockdown drill. You should have received a "Parent Alert Text Message" today at the start and conclusion of the drill. If you did not, please contact our admissions office so we can update your contact information in FACTS, which is the system we use to send you schoolwide text messages should the need arise. The next drill we have will be an announced lockdown drill (faculty and students will shelter within classrooms as we conduct our internal and external reporting processes). Within two weeks of the announced lockdown drill, we will conduct an unannounced lockdown drill, and we will repeat this cycle after Christmas break. You will receive "Parent Alert Text Messages" at the beginning and end of each drill with the words "DRILL, DRILL, DRILL" noted in the text.
We train for a day we pray will never happen, but we will continue to train to ensure your child's safety. Thank you for your continued partnership in a Christ-centered education amidst a rapidly changing world.
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