Dear Sunset Ridge Families,
I think it goes without saying that student safety is a top priority for staff in schools. At the district level, there has been a lot of work done, specifically about reunification after an emergency event, and some of the guidance might be hard for families to embrace ("Stay put - don't come to school") and some might be easy to forget if there is an emergency ("Come to the reunification site with a photo ID").
I'm going to try to contextualize this. Let's imagine us evacuating Sunset Ridge for a gas leak. The district would hope that families do not come to school because they would be scrambling buses and staff to get our kids, warmly and safely, to a site for staging for pickup. You can imagine how it could create some chaos if families came to the school to pick up kids as we were loading them on buses.
Once at the reunification site, we expect that we'd have school staff on-hand to connect families with kids but, in the event that, for some reason, they weren't, there would be district staff who might not know your faces or names. Therefore, they ask you to be ready with a photo ID.
There is a pretty comprehensive communication plan for keeping families informed (texts, etc.), and key staff have visited evacuation sites and trained in the case of this kind of emergency.
As always, we welcome your questions!
Brett
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