Leadership Matters September 2013 .pub

Opportunities and challenges emerge from crisis situations

understatement) and immediate connection to the outside world. Facebook was the platform of choice. (This also speaks to how many people outside of our world are continually logged into and updating social media.) The immediacy in communicating our lockdown to parents, media and others was astounding -- and required that quick and accurate information be disseminated by a school official. Because of the size of our district, that school official is me.

By Dr. Lindsey Hall, Superintendent Morton Comm Unit 709

As we all know from our work as leaders in public schools, every day brings unexpected happenings, pleasant surprises, unusual circumstances and problems to solve. On May 21, Morton High School received a threat of violence from a student. Upon assessment of that threat by our school resource officer, the school was placed on hard lock down. The district office and administration were

 Before traveling to Morton High School, I consulted with my secretary about notifying my board members that there was an emergency situation there. I have four board members with children at MHS so I personally and quickly called those people. Others were texted, per our protocol. The message was simple: I told them what I knew at the time, which wasn’t much, and followed with the assurance that we would follow up with more information. Some information is better than no information.  Upon my arrival at the high school, I received a briefing from the administration and law enforcement. The school had been on lockdown for approximately 10 minutes. This was ample time for outgoing communication to burn

notified, and we were in full implementation of our crisis plan. Thankfully, the situation was brought to closure within an hour and 15 minutes from the discovery of the threat. The student admitted to communicating the threat, was arrested, and some partial sense of normalcy was restored to the remainder of the educational setting, which included final exams for our underclassmen. In hindsight and upon reflection of this incident, I learned

“The immediacy in communicating our lockdown to parents, media and others was astounding -- and required that quick and accurate

information be disseminated by a school official. Because of the size of our district, that school official is me.” — Dr. Lindsey Hall, superintendent at Morton Comm Unit 709

up the network. Immediately, I composed a message to parents telling them that a threat of violence had been made, the school was on lockdown, there was not an imminent threat of violence, and that as updates became available, those would be communicated to them. We utilized our “phone blast” and “email blast” system to accomplish this. I feel that a key piece of information that I included in this initial communication was this: “I respectfully request that at this time you do not come to Morton High School. You will not be allowed into the building.” No parents showed up. (Continued on page 14)

several things that I thought might be valuable to share with others in terms of communicating both during and after the event. No matter how prepared one might be for a crisis or emergency situation, my experiences have only reinforced the concept that every instance can serve as a learning experience. Here are my insights:  We knew that word would get out about our lockdown via Twitter, email, Instagram, Facebook, texting, etc. No matter how much we wanted to believe our “no cell-phone policy” in classrooms was enforced and effective, many of our students not only had their phones with them, but the 4G network provides for fast (that’s an

13