Emergency Preparedness and School Safety

The Loveland School District has a comprehensive Critical Incident Response Plan or CIRP. The comprehensive plan reviews preventing, identifying and reacting appropriately to any type of crisis situation in our buildings.

The CIRP was developed and is updated by the District Safety Committee composed of the District nurses, the School Resource Officers, representatives from the Fire/EMS Department in Loveland, the District Business Manager, the Communications Coordinator, school psychologists, custodians and teachers. This core District safety committee meets four times a year. Each of our six school buildings also has a safety committee that meets throughout the year.

Loveland places great importance on school and district staff knowing their responsibilities during a school emergency. District training includes an annual review of the district plan and an annual training sessions or sessions to include the principals and district office staff.

The Loveland safety plan is based on the following premises:

School and workplace safety is a top priority

Students learn, and employees work best, when they feel physically secure

It is the general responsibility of all employees to provide for the safety and security of students and their co-workers.

The school principal has the primary and overall responsibility for the safety and security of all personnel at their school.

Critical Incident Response Plans are most effective when they involve all staff members.

Each school in the Loveland School District has a trained crisis team made up of individuals who will take prompt action whenever unexpected events disrupt the normal educational process. Each building follows the same codes when confronting an emergency. The response codes are based on a traffic light, as in a code red, yellow or green. Depending on the crisis, the code level will be announced in the building and teachers are trained to either go into hold, lockdown, or evacuation.

The District employs the following safety measures in all of our buildings. All exterior doors are locked except for the main entrance. At each unlocked entrance a staff member is present to ensure visitors sign in. All visitors must sign in, give the location of their destination and wear a visitor’s badge. All staff wears badges with photographs. This school year, surveillance cameras were placed throughout our high school campus.

All of our campuses have a School Resource Officer. These police officers have been a tremendous resource in maintaining the safety of our campuses. Periodically the officers have drills to ensure staff and students are following through with the safety procedures and also to practice appropriate responses to a variety of mock emergencies.