Rocky Mountain High School and Poudre School District’s number one priority is to keep all of their students safe. Following recent tragedies, changes have been made to security and practices have been updated. Their philosophy for doing this is to prepare for the worst and always add new ideas as safety measures improve. One of the ways to improve safety for students is to use bells. Rocky has various bells that mean various things.

So far this year at Rocky, there have been three fire drills. Every fire drill has been an accidental pull of the fire alarm in the hallway. October is National Fire Safety month, so sometime this month there will be a surprise fire drill. The fire alarm is one that all students have heard before and will prompt all classes to evacuate the building.  After everyone goes outside and it is determined that everything is okay, there will be another bell and announcement to bring students back into the building. This year, the police are sent for every fire drill.

As of now Rocky has three bells that have to do with getting to class on time. There is the ten-minute bell, the three-minute bell to encourage students to start heading to class, then there is the tardy bell that will go off right when class is supposed to start. Though teacher policies may vary, students are expected to be seated and ready to start class by the time the tardy bell rings.

A third bell is the lockout bell that will come with an announcement. This happened a week ago when there was an armed robbery at the 7-11 near Rocky. A lockout bell means all the doors are locked and people will not be allowed in, but it’s business as usual in the building.

There is also a lock in bell that will sound and give everyone an announcement describing what to do during a real instance or a drill. Lock ins are when students are locked in the building with a threat outside.

Lockdowns are when there is a threat inside the school and teachers and students have to protect themselves in the building. Everyone must be quiet and wait for further announcements. Teachers will lock the doors and students will go to a safe area of the classroom away from windows. Lockdowns do not typically have a bell. They will be announced over the intercom. 

While Poudre School District has not implemented it, other districts in Colorado have taken the idea of having a blue box hanging in the hallways. This blue box is similar to the fire alarms that are around Rocky; the only difference is that when a student or staff pulls this box, a bell sounds and it is a lockdown drill. When pulled, an alarm will sound and there will be an announcement that is set on repeat with specific instructions on what to do and how to keep students safe.

“It will repeat ‘we are currently in a lockdown’ with a pretty scary alarm, because it is a scary time, but we have to practice so we know what to do in a real situation,’” Mr. Stapleton said.

The PSD Security Manager is Norm Bastian. He is the man who is finding new things to keep all the schools in the district safe. He is looking into putting a blue box put into Rocky Mountain High School. He is always looking for new and innovative ways to keep students safe and schools secure. 

During the month of November the district will emphasize the importance of these safety drills. They will be coordinating with schools to practice procedures and lockdown drills throughout the month.