Davis High Safety Week

By Isabelle Chen,

HUB Staff Writer–

Over winter vacation, families throughout the Davis community received a recorded phone call from Superintendent Winfred Roberson. In this message, Roberson announced that once classes were back in session, students at all school sites in the Davis Joint Unified School District would practice the essential emergency procedures: fire, earthquake, lockdown, and teacher down drills.

Vice Principal Tom McHale is in charge of safety training at Davis High; students and staff hear his voice announcing and ending each drill. According to McHale, the district holds safety week twice a year, and decided to move the second group of drills to early January after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

“Our drills help our school community to understand and practice our safety procedures and be prepared to respond effectively and confidently in the event of an emergency,” McHale said.

On Jan. 9—the day of the lockdown drill—sophomore Andrew Chen had orchestra class, which is, on Wednesdays, taught by Tom Slabaugh.

“He told us he was [present during] the Stockton shooting,” Chen said. “He took the drill seriously, and he told us we had to take it seriously, too, because we could have to use it at any time.”

Like the Davis High administration and Slabaugh, Chen recognizes the importance of taking these precautionary measures.

“If there’s a shooter on campus, then we don’t want to be sitting in our chairs going, ‘Hi there,’” said Chen. “I think that overall, doing safety week has given me a better knowledge of […] how to deal with these situations if they arise.”