A new strategy for dealing with a potential active shooter situation at school is going to be taught to students next week. The new Intruder procedure will kick off on Jan. 11, when students will watch a presentation in their 3rd Hour classes that explains the 4E Program that teachers were trained with last semester.

Principal John Shaughnessy said the presentation on Jan. 11 is strictly for educational presentation, with no interactive experiences. The session will be only 20 minutes with a PowerPoint educating students on the different steps of the procedure.

The official drill will take place on Jan. 15. This drill is called as an “options based training”, which is part of the 4E program. It will be during 2nd Hour and is when the students go through a modified drill of what the teachers practiced earlier this school year.

Shaughnessy said during the drill, “A scenario will be presented, and our classrooms will have to act based on the scenario from what they learned on the training they received on Monday.”

This new procedure also covers issues that have been concerns in the past such as where students would go when they get out of the building. The new structure for dealing with an intruder focuses more on what schools wants to focus on in the future. For example, there will be a focus on getting students out of the building instead of being locked in and hiding in the building.

St. Louis County Police School Resource Officer Bernie Widdis said, ” The 4Es stand for to Educate, Escape, Evade and Engage.”

The goal of the training is to teach people to be more aware of what they see and hear in a potentially dangerous intruder situation and make the best decision about how to react. At times, that could be to escape rather than hide in place or even to engage an active shooter.

Students also wonder why they are getting the drill now instead of when the teachers did it in the previous semester.

Widdis said, “We are going to train the elementary schools different than the middle schools, we are going to train the middle schools different than the high schools, it all takes baby steps.”