As the BluePoint alarm system sounded, teachers quickly shut their doors and windows and students hid into the corners of classrooms, following the instructions for a lockdown drill.
On Sept. 26 at 8:57 a.m., students engaged in a planned drill in their classrooms, which is a mandatory activity for schools in Maryland. This drill simulated what would happen if there were to be an emergency situation in which a lockdown of the school premises was necessary.
One of these possible scenarios could be an active shooter, or another dangerous threat to the students and faculty at the Upper School building. Schools across the United States have been affected by an increase in school shootings in the past few years. According to Education Week, there have been 234 school shootings since 2018 in which at least one person was killed or injured.
In the early fall of this school year, there was a possible threat at the nearby Bethesda Chevy Chase High School (BCC), a local public high school.
Arthur Schwartz, a freshman at BCC, experienced his first real lockdown after a bomb threat was called into the school at roughly 2:20 p.m. on Sept. 4. Since Schwartz had just switched from Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School to a large public high school, this was a stressful experience for him.
“At first, I didn’t really take it seriously, because it never happened to me before in middle school,” Schwartz said. “But then, when there were a couple of announcements saying ‘This isn’t a drill, this is a real threat,’ then I got startled. I was a little bit nervous because I was confused, and also, I was scared, because I had no idea what would happen.”
Schwartz said that BCC takes security quite seriously, as no one can enter the school without a student ID and police officers patrol the hallways to ensure the safety of the students. Due to the number of school shootings that have occurred in recent years, schools have worked on increasing the quality and quantity of security.
The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the school shooting in Evergreen, Colorado and the armed attack on an United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility all occurred within the last month. These incidents alarm school security details who want to prevent any chance of a similar event taking place.
At JDS, campus security is taken seriously in order to react to urgent situations and prevent any threats to people in the building, according to Head of Security Herbie Epstein.
“We’re being proactive,” Epstein said. “We’re not going to wait for something to happen. It’s [the students] who need to take things seriously to prevent [security threats] from happening.”
BluePoint, a system of physical alarms that, when pulled, contacts law enforcement directly and triggers a lockdown of the school building, is a security measure that was installed last year. During a lockdown, students gather in a spot out of view from the classroom window in order to prevent any contact between the active threat and students.
“Before BluePoint, we relied on someone picking up their phone, calling, and then that goes to 911 and then 911 dispatches that to the police,” Epstein said. “[Now, BluePoint] does it all at once, and does the notifications and speeds up the process to get into a lockdown.”
Security guard Don King has his own way of contributing to school security when working at JDS: establishing relationships with many students as they walk in every morning. King values creating genuine relationships as well as having knowledge of who comes into the building every day.
“I personally have both conventional and at times maybe unconventional approaches to how I work,” King said. “… If I’m able to pick up on [students] feeling uncertain about something, then I can then address it accordingly.”
Freshman Gabey Silverberg loves the opportunity to connect with the security guards while also feeling safe while at school.
“The strict security protocols and the patrolling security guards at school really make me feel secure as a student at JDS,” Silverberg said. “Also, I love the security guard Mr. King in particular, because he greets us at the door every single morning, which I really appreciate … I know that the whole entire student body really appreciates his work in the school.”
