Jefferson City Public Schools update safety plan

The Jefferson City Public School District updated its plan to keep students safe this coming school year.

Monday, the district’s safety and security coordinator presented the updated plan during the board of education meeting.

In the 2016-17 school year, JCPS will start including intruder emergency drills.

The district’s safety plan recommends each school hold at least five active drills per year. Those may also include severe weather drills, lockdown drills and more.

The lockdown drills were also updated to include different scenarios for threats inside or outside a building.

Another big change was the addition of a new mobile app called “Lokdown.”

Starting this week, school staff and administrators will be enrolled and trained on the app.

The Lockdown app is to quickly notify administrators and staff of an emergency situation including a lockdown, evacuation, medical emergency or other alert.

“That’s again an option for communication during a crisis so that we can get real time immediate information direct to our staff, so the administrators for them to make decisions, and for our staff to respond immediately,” School Safety and Security Coordinator Kurt Mueller said.

There were also a few updates to the crisis management plan.

This school year, it will incorporate an action plan called A.L.I.C.E which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter or Evacuation to guide staff in emergency situations.