Wake County trains school leaders on new safety protocol
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- School resource officers and administrators from across Wake County gathered at Millbrook High School as part of the district's annual SRO Summit, focusing on school safety preparations ahead of the upcoming school year.
The summit brings together law enforcement officers, principals, assistant principals and school security leaders for training and collaboration.
A major focus of the event is the district's new Standard Response Protocol, which replaces the familiar color-coded emergency system, including code red and code yellow, with plain-language commands such as "lockdown" and "hold."
District security leaders say the change is designed to make emergency instructions easier for anyone in a school building to understand immediately, including students, teachers, parents and visitors who may not be familiar with Wake County's previous emergency codes.
"Locked down is a more plain speak of what you need to do. So in that case, you'll hear the lockdown locks lights out of sight. That verbiage gives you much more clear direction than Code Red," said Kendrick Scott, senior director of security for Wake County Public School System.
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Scott said the new protocol also includes an intermediate response option known as a hold.
"The standard response protocol has what's called a hold feature, which is very nice, and it gives us something that's in between the two so that there's something we just need to investigate, something to figure out. Is it something we need to rotate protective action on or not? Instead of going straight to a code red, which we would have to do and cause all that panic in the community," Scott said.
In addition to learning the new terminology, school resource officers and administrators are participating in crisis-response training scenarios. District leaders describe the effort as part of an "all-hazards approach" to school safety as preparations continue for the start of the new school year.
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