Review of Friday's Crisis
Friday caught all of us in Christchurch off guard. For us the situation was compounded by having no official communication from the Ministry of Education or the Police until close to 3 pm. We were first alerted that there was an incident in Christchurch developing by one of the office ladies receiving a text from her daughter at Avonside saying they were in lockdown; at that stage we had 370 children assembled in the library, a bit restless as assembly was almost over.
We had two key decisions we had to make quite quickly and with little official information.
Did we lock down in the library or did we move the children back to their rooms?
Did we let the parents who were at school or those who arrived within the next few minutes take their children or did we insist they stay with us?
As with every emergency situation there are things that need to be reflected on and improved.
Senior staff have had the opportunity to meet and review our processes and our decisions on the day.
We know there are areas we need to improve on: it is important that we get parent feedback and that as a management team and as a school we work on being ‘better than before”.
We had two key decisions we had to make quite quickly and with little official information.
Did we lock down in the library or did we move the children back to their rooms?
Did we let the parents who were at school or those who arrived within the next few minutes take their children or did we insist they stay with us?
As with every emergency situation there are things that need to be reflected on and improved.
Senior staff have had the opportunity to meet and review our processes and our decisions on the day.
We know there are areas we need to improve on: it is important that we get parent feedback and that as a management team and as a school we work on being ‘better than before”.
