Oakhill Day School: Approach to Safety and Security

At Oakhill Day School, we recognize that students learn their best when they feel safe, secure, and comfortable. We strive to create that type of environment each day not only for our students, but also for our staff, families, and visitors.

As the emphasis on school safety increases in our society, Oakhill understands that there is a balance between a place that has high security and a place that feels comfortable.  While security is important to all of us, if we stop feeling like “Oakhill”, like a community, then we lose at our core the very essence of who we are. Great care and consideration go into each security feature to make sure it fits our climate and our culture, without taking away from the overall security plan. 

Oakhill believes that there is no single solution we can point to and say, “there, this will protect everyone”. Rather, we believe that it’s going to be a multi-layered approach. Of course, having multiple layers doesn’t do us any good if we don’t practice how to use the options we have, or how to follow any of the plans.  Just like we practice fire and tornado drills, we also practice intruder drills. The goal isn’t to scare anyone—but to inform and practice. Age appropriate discussions are conducted by the teachers with their students for all types of drills. Younger students get to learn how to follow the teacher’s directions, while older students can have deeper discussions about what to do and why.

While we don’t share our exact plans and procedures, rest assured that Oakhill uses all recommended and approved safety practices. We are trained by Strategos, a company that trains many schools, churches, hospitals, as well as law enforcement officers across the metro area. We also have a Certified School Safety Specialist with the Missouri School Board Association and an ALICE certified trainer on staff. While we don’t teach ALICE at Oakhill, there are many best practices across the board from all of our training that overlap, giving us a unified approach to our safety plan.

At the end of the day, putting into place best practices, taking time to conduct staff only as well as staff and student drills, completing multiple training sessions with staff each year, updating and improving security hardware in the building, and employing an armed security officer are all part of the many layers Oakhill uses to help provide a place where our kids and families feel safe. So whether it’s obvious things you can see (thank you Officer Nan and the Strategos team) or things you can’t see (unless you have eagle eyes, you probably won’t notice security film on windows), all decisions are carefully thought out and implemented to create a safe place that still “feels like home”.