Emergency Management

Brooklyn Center Community Schools has partnered with The I Love You Guys Foundation to ensure our emergency procedures, response protocols, and emergency language is consistent and simple language to enhance transparency in the event of an emergency. In addition, we have worked closely with the city of Brooklyn Center to ensure our response protocols meet or exceed standard response protocol recommendations.

HOLD

“Hold” will be used in a situation where students and staff will temporarily stay in their classrooms due to an incident/situation in the building. Within the classroom, the school day will continue as normal until the hold is lifted.

SECURE

"Secure” will be used in a situation where there is a potential threat outside the building. All doors will be secured and limited access to visitors will be granted. During a secure, the school day will continue as normal inside the building.

LOCKDOWN

“Lockdown” will be used in a situation where there is an immediate threat inside the building or potentially approaching the building. All doors will be secured, no access to visitors will be granted, and all normal school day operations will stop.

EVACUATE

“Evacuate” will be used in a situation where conditions within the building are not safe. All students and staff will evacuate through the nearest exit and meet in a predetermined location.

SHELTER

“Shelter” will be used in a situation where weather or environmental conditions are not safe outside the building and sheltering in the building is required.

Crisis Response

Crisis Communications

In the event an emergency, communications will be sent out to families as soon as possible. This could include:

The type of action that was taken (i.e. HOLD, SECURE, LOCKDOWN, EVACUATE, SHELTER)
The duration of the action and reasoning (when applicable)
Any implications the action may have on end of day procedures
Relocation site and re-unification information (if needed)

Parents, guardians, and families can expect to receive emergency communications in the following ways:

Phone Call
Text Message
Email

How do I ensure I receive emergency communications from the district?

Parents, guardians, and families can expect to receive emergency communications via phone call, text message, and emails. To ensure your email and phone number is up-to-date in the district's database, log into your ParentVue account and update your contact information.

While there is an option to opt-out of messages from the district, we recommend that all families stay connected with us to receive important severe and winter weather related messages and/or emergency communications.

Emergency Response Guides

Emergency Response Plan

Brooklyn Center Community Schools (BCCS) has developed a comprehensive emergency plan with the help of local law enforcement, emergency management and public health officials. The emergency plan incorporates all four phases of crisis management:

Prevention/Mitigation
- To prevent critical incidents from occurring, BCCS routinely conducts site assessments at all buildings, including technology and security infrastructure reviews and updates. Additionally we work to build relationships with our student and community so that if a safety concern is presented, we can take appropriate action to prevent and mitigate.
Preparedness
- Drills are routinely held in all BCCS sites to prepare students and staff for emergency response. Each site is required to do 11 drills throughout the school year. Those drills are evacuation, shelter in place, lockdown and severe weather shelter.
Response
- BCCS has partnered with the I Love You Guys Foundation to implement five universal response actions that can be implemented quickly. Each school has a Building Crisis Response Team that leads staff and students through an emergency. In the rare event of an emergency, the school principal, or their designee, will implement one of the following actions as needed: HOLD, SECURE, LOCKDOWN, EVACUATE, or SHELTER.
Recovery
- If an evacuation takes place, families will be notified of the reunification site. At the reunification site, parents should be prepared to have their identification with them. We ask parents remain patient to account for the safety of all parties involved.
- Following a critical incident, district and school administration will meet to assess the situation, response and learning points for continual growth and improvement.

ADDITIONAL SAFETY & SECURITY INFORMATION

DISTRICT-WIDE ENTRYWAY PROCEDURES

The safety of our students and staff is our priority. Thank you for your understanding and patience as we work together to make our schools as safe and secure as possible.

Each district site uses a visitor management system to ensure safety and security for all our students and staff. Our goal is to make our schools as safe as possible and make the check-in process as efficient as we can for our visitors and staff.
All visitors and vendors must enter and exit the site’s main entrance and check in through the Raptor System. If visitors or vendors are simply picking up or dropping off something to the front office, they do not need to check in through the system. The system will be used if a visitor will be entering into the building for any reason.
On the first visit to one of our schools, visitors will be required to provide a state-issued driver’s license or state-issued ID (from any state). District staff will use our new Raptor Visitor Management software to complete a registered sexual offenders check and to register you in the system for future visits to any school.
Visitors will NOT be required to show their ID on subsequent visits. On subsequent visits, you will be asked your name and the system will issue a visitor badge for that day’s visit.
It is important to note that the Raptor system only scans the required information to complete a comparison with the national databases of registered sex offenders. Additional data from the driver’s license is not gathered, nor is the system connected to any other systems such as the Department of Motor Vehicles. Therefore, any other information on the ID is not accessible to school staff.
Once entry to the building is approved, we will issue a visitor badge that identifies the visitor, the date, and the purpose of the visit. You will be asked to wear the visitor badge during the entire duration of your visit.

In the event that you do not have a state-issued driver’s license or state-issued ID on your first visit, or you are not able to scan your license or state ID, school staff will ask you to stay in the office area and they will bring your child to you. No visitors will be allowed beyond the office without a visitor badge.

Behavior threat assessments are an investigative approach to identifying and intervening with individuals who may pose a risk of causing harm.
A multidisciplinary behavior threat assessment team, in conjunction with the appropriate policies, tools, and training, is the best practice for mitigating acts of targeted violence.
Behavior Threat Assessments are used to assess and manage the ongoing needs and safety of all individuals in the building.

Questions? Contact John Huber, Principal on Special Assignment at jhuber@bccs286.org or call 763-272-4922.

Logo Image

In This Section