The security staff at the school has been taking steps this year to improve the safety of the school and have asked staff and students to respect those measures in order for them to work properly.

Head of Security Cathy Schmidt said practicing safety measures correctly during drills allows people to act appropriately if there ever was an actual event. She drew on her past career experience to explain this concept.

“In law enforcement, I was on the fight patrol as a sergeant, and with that training, you have memory skills that your body will revert to that you were taught. Even in practice shooting, practice makes perfect,” said Schmidt, who is in her second year as head of security at MHS.

As a result, she stressed the need to take practice drills seriously.

“We all need to know what to do in case of an emergency,” Schmidt said. “You are going to panic; it’s the way it’s going to be, but if you remember or if you have done it, and you really have taken it seriously, chances are you’ll have a better outcome.”

Drills are required in Illinois because of the School Safety Drill Act, which requires school emergency and crisis plans to be reviewed annually by school administration and first responders. It also establishes a minimum number and type of school safety drills schools must conduct.

The purpose of the School Safety Drill Act is “to establish minimum requirements and standards for schools to follow when conducting school safety drills and reviewing school emergency and crisis response plans and to encourage schools and first responders to work together for the safety of children.”

“[We have school lock down drills] to get a feeling of safety, understand what to do if there is an intruder, and it’s the kind of society we live in today,” Social Studies teacher Susan Theotokatos said.

MHS has multiple lock down drills as required by the state, but some students have expressed that the school is not holding enough drills every year.

“I feel like we don’t really practice [the drills] enough, and we haven’t really done a lot, and I feel like that it’s more of a common sense thing that we should not second guess doing some more drills, just in case,” said Lizeth Mora, senior.

MHS practices three different types of lockdown drills.

“We have a soft lockdown, a hard lock down, and when I came here, I created what I call the containment lockdown. The containment lockdown is different because of the way the school is made; it is pretty much a box,” said Schmidt. “When we have issues in a certain area, we can use security to contain that area and have the kids go around instead of calling a soft lockdown for the whole school, so it’s beneficial.”

Since Schmidt has started at MHS, she has found various ways to make the drills as authentic as possible.

“We have updated [a lot] since I have been here,” she said. “I did a fire drill last year where I put pretend fire in a hallway, [a sign], so the students came out and were like, ‘Oh, there’s a fire here, where do I go? What irked me about that [drill] was that the students went to a door with one bank doors, so there was a big funnel and the faculty did not go down the hall to the bigger bank of doors, so we had everyone going through the small doors.”

Schmidt discussed how this drill showed how important communication is. The faculty should’ve been saying go down a different way. She explained how training is extremely important and that confusion during practices will help with problem-solving for better results during an actual event.

Some students have also said other students need to take the drills more seriously.

“Some kids still talk during [the lock downs], and they don’t pay attention. If there is a soft lock down drill or hard lock down drill, kids just go in the corner and Snapchat it, and they don’t listen to some of the things teachers are saying during it, and they make jokes,” said Mora.

Besides working on the drill process, the school security is also trying to make the everyday environment safer, too, by enforcing the use of IDs to make sure that everyone who enters the school is a student or faculty member at MHS.

“It’s actually for the safety of everyone in this building and faculty, for everybody to check IDs to make sure that [a] young person in the building is a student. We will eventually get to checking IDs in the morning, so it’s very important to have your ID,” said Schmidt.

The school is also not allowing visitors to come into the building while there are passing periods. Visitors stay with a security guard at the front of the school until the passing period is over.

Additionally, the school also employed new security staff this year.

“We have retired law enforcement here,” Schmidt said. “We have people that have been in the field for a long time, and I think we have a great staff. Everybody here is looking out for the students….We are here to help; the security is here to help in any way that we can.”