Preparedness, prevention, practice: How CSHS is enhancing safety procedures

207 school shooting incidents have occurred nationally in 2025, according to a report from the K-12 School Shooting Database. That number is trending downward after peaking at 351 incidents in 2023. Along with renovations that make campus safer, Cedar Shoals High School and other CCSD schools are constantly revisiting plans and systems to keep campuses safe. 

Principal Makeba Clark believes it’s important for safety to be the top priority, accepting the responsibility to ensure students return home safely.

“As a principal, safety is the top priority. When parents send their kids off to school they expect for them to come back home the same way that they sent them to school. Schools are meant to be a place where we nurture students to grow and develop, and we are responsible for so many students. It’s just so important to make sure we are providing that (safety) away from home,” Clark said.

Since the implementation of the Safe Schools Act in 2023, safety drills—fire drills, lockdown drills and weather drills—have been mandated for all schools in Georgia to ensure students, teachers and administration know what to do in emergencies.

However, 69% of teachers nationwide indicated that participating in active shooter drills has no impact on their perceptions of safety at school, and only one-fifth said that drills make them feel more safe, according to a 2023 American Teacher Panel Survey. 

Social studies teacher William Miller believes that safety drills help in being prepared for actual emergencies.

“They’re effective. Could it be better? Absolutely. I think the drills get us prepared for when something does happen, whether it be the fire drills, the lockdown drills, the tornado drills or the bad weather drills,” Miller said. “It gets us ready for when it actually does happen. We can be prepared. I think they do a pretty good job here.”

In a national survey of youth ages 14-24 published by the National Library of Medicine, 60.2% of respondents said that drills make them feel “scared and hopeless.” However 56.1% also said drills “teach kids on what to do.” Another 24% indicated drills do not improve safety because they inform potential shooters or are ineffective because “people will likely panic, forgetting their drill.” 

These safety measures are ever-evolving. One new development at Cedar Shoals is a safety protocol in which staff and students must wait three minutes after the fire alarm begins for administrators and security to ensure the campus is completely safe before staff and students evacuate the building.

Junior Keion Watson feels confident about his own ability to respond to safety drills, specifically fire drills, but he wishes the three minute rule was better explained.

“Personally, I know what to do. But I feel like the drills aren’t really that frequent and a lot of them aren’t explained well. Like the three minute rule with fire drills. A lot of the time people will go out into the hall because they think ‘the fire alarms are going off, so we should leave.’ But then, I know, go back to the classroom,” Watson said. 

Senior Kariah Butler believes safety drills are helpful, and she feels more comfortable when a teacher is present and actively guides students through the process. 

“My sophomore year I was in my chemistry class, and we had a real lockdown,” Butler said. “My teacher was directing everyone to where no one would see us through the door or the windows and encouraging everyone to be quiet and not make any noise because we didn’t know what was going on,” Butler said. 

In the same national survey by the National Library of Medicine, 27% of children reported post‑lockdown drill anxiety. 

With this element in mind, CCSD interim superintendent Jennifer Scott emphasizes the importance of supporting student mental health. She says the district is committed to addressing any threats to student mental safety by providing necessary support and ensuring all middle and high schools in CCSD have mental health specialists, along with mental wellness specialists at the district level that offer support to elementary schools and staff.

“We take mental health seriously, because we know that sometimes what we see from students and how they’re responding to various situations that they are in, or that how they react, can sometimes be triggered by their own mental health, and we want to ensure that we’re providing that support to them,” Scott said. “I’m not just thinking of it from the lens of physical safety. If there are things that students are experiencing that are a threat to their mental safety, then we want to make sure that we are addressing that.”

With Cedar Shoals nearing the end of renovations, Miller says that the improvements have made the building more secure, especially with new doors and updated fire alarms.

“I think structure wise, (we are) probably more safe, just because the building is not as old. I think that it helps with safety and student behavior,” Miller said. 

With construction almost complete, over 120 new security cameras have been installed around campus. Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, CCSD installed a districtwide system called CENTEGIX, a safety and security system for schools and other workplaces.

Staff members, teachers and administrators all wear a card with a panic button, also known as CrisisAlert, that notifies administrators and security of an emergency or activates a campus-wide lockdown.

English teacher Perla Villatoro finds the CENTEGIX System helpful and appreciates that it allows her to call someone if there’s an emergency, even though she has never used it personally. 

“I think it is helpful in a way that is on my lanyard, and so in any moment where there’s something happening I can immediately reach for it and press those buttons,” Villatoro said. 

With the start of the 2025-26 school year, CSHS received an upgraded version of the CENTEGIX System, according to Associate Principal of Operations Nathan Reincheld. In addition, Cedar Shoals also upgraded the fire alarm system. All these changes were part of the construction and renovation plans.

“The CENTEGIX System (CSHS) is getting a new version of it. The new version is working and (when) we think of some of those larger threats like that happened to Apalachee, CENTEGIX is one of those systems that helps ensure we’re safe,” Reincheld said. “There’s a new badge, and this is a different version for all the strobes.”

The CENTEGIX System played a fundamental role during the horrific tragedy that happened in Apalachee High School. With the use of the panic buttons, teachers were able to alert the police, the school and the school district’s central office quickly, which triggered a lockdown and enabled school resource officers to confront the shooter.

School resource officers are present in 65% of U.S. public schools, according to a research study published by the RAND Corporation. There are a total of seven security personnel working at Cedar Shoals, including school resource officer Tommy Dorsey and Clarke County police officer Jared Johnson.  

CCSD collaborates with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department through the school district’s tip line, which is monitored 24/7. The tip line allows individuals to report safety concerns in any school in the district. CCSD also gives access to some of the district’s emergency management processes to ACCPD so that they can be quick to act upon any emergency. 

“The school resource officers have different radios than the school (administrators) do. So we usually radio (ACCPD). (Officer) Johnson will talk with the police department and I will speak with the administration here,” Dorsey said.

CSHS school resource officers also go through safety training to ensure all staff and students are safe on campus.

“We are required to have 20 hours of annual training,” Dorsey said. “The youth are the future, so that’s the most prized possession. It’s important for us to keep them safe.”

In 2021-22, 93% of public schools and school districts provided training on safety procedures for emergency situations, according to a report published by the National Center for Education Statistics. CCSD teachers also complete safety training courses online through Vector Solutions, a platform that provides online safety and wellness courses for staff and students. 

“Before every school year begins, we have to go through training. But it’s extensive so it’s required. You watch the videos, you read and then you take the test at the end of each module. You have to get 80% on each of the (modules) but you have to have 100% of them done,” Miller said. 

Additionally, Cedar Shoals administrators refresh their training on the CENTEGIX system each year.

“We’re always informing our faculty and staff about our safety procedures. At the beginning of the year, we go through our safety manual and we talk about drills and how to conduct drills and things that teachers need to be knowledgeable about before a drill,” Clark said. 

While Cedar Shoals and CCSD are actively developing new plans to further enhance safety standards, these plans cannot be shared to the public.

“Safety plans would not be shared with anyone outside of the school district. There are even aspects of safety plans that go into levels of detail that aren’t even shared with staff, because there are pieces of it that you would not want someone who is intending to cause harm to know about. They can potentially plan to use that information if they are intending to harm individuals within our school,” Scott said.

For students like Butler, the improvements to student safety at Cedar Shoals are noticeable.

“It’s been a nice change. I feel like (Dr. Clark) has come and she’s changed Cedar to be better,” Butler said. “The security in the front (of Cedar, Lasonja Hunt), she does a good job at making sure nobody leaves campus when they’re not supposed to. I feel like with people like her, good teachers and positive people that are honest and truthful with you, everything will be fine.”