It’s a cold Monday morning during second period, and most students are counting down the minutes until tutorial. Suddenly, loud beeps followed by an announcement sound over the P.A. system. The school goes into a practice lockdown and students begin to follow classroom procedure.
On Nov. 7, MVHS conducted a lockdown drill, later deemed a failure by the administration. This drill was conducted differently, as not all faculty members were aware of it ahead of time, and thus many had not discussed standard procedure with their classes.
“The lockdown drill for us went alright overall, we were able to board up the doors,” history teacher Cody Owens said. “[A challenge we had] was getting students to take it seriously.”
Another challenge Owens faced was the sheer number of students he had in his room during the drill. American Studies has approximately 60 students in the classroom at any given time, and during lockdown drills students in the class next door also have to squeeze in. This is because the journalism and yearbook class room next door is unable to be secured during a lockdown drill. It was challenging for him to communicate with such a packed room. He also added that almost every student in the room was using a cell phone, which is against lockdown policy.
Senior Sajeev Saluja said that teachers should lead by example for successful lockdown drills. Although his class took it seriously to satisfy the class rules, Saluja believes a lack of communication causes problems with these drills.
“The problem that students see, the students don’t see that [lockdowns have] any efficacy,” Saluja said. “I don’t think students think it’s effective.”
Science teacher Andrew Goldenkranz, however, has seen MVHS react to a real shooter situation within the community when, in 2011, Shareef Allman killed three people and wounded seven others in Cupertino. Goldenkranz was on campus when it happened, but since school hadn’t started yet, students were asked to stay at home. He says, however, that it left an imprint in his mind and reinforced the importance of lockdown drills.
“I’ve had very good experiences with students in this situation,” Goldenkranz said. “I talk to them about the importance of being quiet and not being as a rule like, you must be quiet because I say so.”
Instead, Goldenkranz talks to his students about the importance of the drills.
Moving forward, MVHS will have to address this failure and look to improve. According to Goldenkranz, Owens and Saluja, the key for preparedness and execution is communication between faculty and students. Even though Saluja said his class did relatively well, students didn’t see any significance.
“The class took it seriously [only] because the teacher took it seriously,” Saluja said.
