The Allegany County Public School System would like to stress to parents, students, faculty and staff, and community members that Allegany County’s public schools currently have very stringent policies and procedures in place to help maintain school security. Any threats or alleged incidents that occur in our public school system are thoroughly investigated by law enforcement officers and school administrators in the interest of protecting the safety of students and staff. Additionally, the Elected Board takes school security very seriously. It is their duty to provide the most appropriate security measures possible to protect all students. All visitors are required to sign in at the main office upon entering any public school as well as wear a visitor’s badge during their stay in the building.
All Board of Education employees receive ongoing annual training in school safety. There is an emergency planning team in place at every school as well as a countywide planning team at the central office. These individuals receive many hours of special training from the National Fire School in order to have the ability to write comprehensive emergency plans. These teams consist of principals, assistant principals, custodians, school nurses, school counselors, and teachers. Since the ’98-’99 school year, every principal is required to update their emergency plans to be certain that they meet all of Maryland’s regulations as well as the school safety planning requirements mandated by the U.S. Department of Education. In addition, principals are also required to perform drills for every posture response including but not limited to lockdowns, lock-ins, evacuations and reverse evacuations.
The school system asks that local area business partners help educate the public by reporting accurate information. Needless to say, the residents of Allegany County should be assured that their students’ safety is the top priority with system administrators and ACPS’s current security precautions will get stricter as unfortunate world events continue to unfold making certain that the staff and students of Allegany County are never in any danger.