Meeting will start one hour earlier than usual

The Governing Board of the Benicia Unified School District will be considering the approval of safety plans for the district and its seven schools at a shortened meeting this Thursday, which will start at 6 p.m. so the trustees can attend Benicia High School’s open house that evening.

Recent tragedies at schools across the nation have reinforced the need to update school safety plans, especially since Benicia High experienced a scare of its own last September when the school was placed on precautionary lockdown after a student had made threats online. Each school will be reviewing and updating its Comprehensive Safety Plan which have to be submitted to their respective School Safety Committee by March 1. The plans include procedures to follow in the event of an emergency and strategies to use to create healthy, safe environments for the schools. The plans are approved by each school’s site council and then submitted to the school board for approval. Dr. Leslie Beatson, the assistant superintendent of educational services, will be delivering an overview of the plans for the schools and district.

Benicia High School’s safety plan, for example, designates crisis response plans in the event of fire alarms, earthquakes, precautionary lockdowns, bomb threats, air contamination and severe windstorms or tornadoes. The plan also presents instructions for faculty once a fire alarm has been sounded. Teachers begin by orderly escorting students to the designated evacuation zone, checking off which students are present or absent, sending one student to deliver evacuation attendance forms to a zone leader— a designated teacher or faculty member in that wing of campus—, then the zone leader reports to a designated zone supervisor— usually a counselor or security guard—with the information, after which the zone supervisor will report the situation of their zone to the administration. Once all teachers and students have been accounted for, everyone can safely return to their classrooms.

The school board will be asked to approve the safety plans for all the schools as well as the district itself.

In other business, Deputy Superintendent Dr. Michael Gardner and Chief Business Official Tim Rahill will be delivering a report on projected enrollment and staffing for the 2017-18 school year.

The board will begin its open session with a special start time of 6 p.m., Thursday, in the Benicia Unified School District Board Room at the district building on 350 East K Street. There will be an earlier closed session at 5:30 p.m.

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