School Safety

Safety Drills

Keeping your children safe during school is a top priority at Otsego Public Schools. In addition to our own safety measures, we comply with the State of Michigan School Safety Requirements. These include a number of drills throughout the year.

Each building must conduct:

Fire Drills

At least five fire drills each year; three must be held before December 1st and the other two must be done during the remainder of the year with reasonable time between each drill.

Tornado Drills

Hold at least two tornado drills each year and at least one of those drills must be done in March.

Lockdown Drills (Includes Shelter in Place and Lockdown)

Practice at least three lockdown drills. At least one of these drills must be conducted by December 21st and at least one must be conducted after January 1st. The drills must be conducted with reasonable spacing between each. School boards must seek input from local public safety officials about the nature of these drills.
At least one of any of these three of drills must occur during either lunch, recess, or some other time when a significant number of students are not in their classrooms.
No drills may be scheduled at at time that would interfere with state-mandate testing.
In addition, the date and time of these drills must documented on the school's website within 30 days of the drill and the documentation must be maintained on the website for at least three years.
Terminology you will hear: Shelter in Place, Lockdown

Code Blue

"Code Blue" is generally used to indicate a patient requiring resuscitation or otherwise in need of immediate medical attention, most often as the result of a respiratory issue or cardiac arrest. OPS conducts at least two Code Blue drills each year. Each building has a Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) trained in CPR and First Aid who will respond when a Code Blue is called.

During a Code Blue, teachers might be asked to clear the hallways and close their doors during this time to protect the privacy of the individual as they are being treated and/or transported through the hallways. Code Blue is only for an individual medical response, not a school-wide situation.

This following report lists the date and time that our building drills were conducted. This is updated on a monthly basis.

2024-25 Safety Drill Report

Term Definitions

When the school district needs to alter the daily routine, you will hear two different terms for our actions: Shelter in Place or Lockdown.

Shelter In Place
Lockdown

Shelter In Place

Shelter in place is initiated when school officials believe there is some type of emergency that does not directly impact the interior of the school. Shelter-in-place is typically used when police are engaged in an operation nearby, outside of the school. This does not automatically mean there is a suspect search; examples might be an industrial accident, chemical spill, gas leak, or materials transported through the community. The goal is to keep students and staff safe and indoors. During a shelter in place, outside doors are locked and entrance and exit from the building is limited or restricted. Windows will be shut and locked and may be covered to reduce visibility. Instruction, class changes, and all indoor activities continue as scheduled. Generally, the duration of these situations would last minutes or hours.

Access to Students during Shelter-In-Place

For many parents, your first instinct will be to come to the school to check on your child or take him or her home. However, to ensure the safety of our students during the Shelter in Place period, we will not be opening our doors to anyone who is unauthorized to enter. As a parent, we recognize how hard this would be. Please know that we will be taking good care of your child.

Lockdown

A school lockdown occurs when there is a threat or potential threat to staff or student safety in the area. This could be a police activity with a suspect nearby, it is not automatically a person seeking access to the school. In the name of safety, however, we will take extra steps to protect students. During a lockdown, the school is closed to all visitors and students are supervised until an "all clear" is given by law enforcement authorities. During these situations, we may not be able to provide all details due to the police matter, but we will explain what we can and keep you informed of information as we are able. We must defer to law enforcement officials in these situations for information to share as to not interfere with their investigation.

Notification during Shelter In Place or Lockdowns

In the case of one of these actions, parents are notified through a phone call generated through the Parent Portal of Infinite Campus. It is vital that you have your phone number updated in this system to receive important notifications. Details or resources will also be posted on the district’s website.

Access to Students during Lockdowns

During a school lockdown, parents are strongly encouraged not to come to the school, due to the heightened risk and should only attempt to arrive at the school after a lockdown has been lifted. Should an emergency response be called for, it’s important that emergency vehicles are able to reach the campus quickly and easily. Parents who attempt to come to the school may obstruct emergency vehicles’ access and even endanger themselves, or their children.

Do not panic. Actual lockdown situations are highly controlled events where police and school officials are together coordinating procedures for the safety of all involved. We will keep families updated through our phone messaging system as new information is available.

Things to think about:

It is very easy to become panicked when a school goes into lockdown. Please don’t panic. As adults, we want to keep the situation calm for our students.
When we are in a lockdown, no one will be allowed in or out of the building. Please do not come to the school to take your child out of school.
In times of lockdowns, our office assistants and administrators are often busy on the phones with outside officials learning more about the situation and getting directions on how to proceed. Please do not call the school unless absolutely necessary as not to tie up the phone lines. It’s imperative that law enforcement officials are able to get through.
Please note that in a police matter, it is not the place of the school district to release details of the event. We will do our best to give a brief description for why a lockdown is taking place, but, due to the investigative process, might not be able to release very many details. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
There are a variety of reasons for a lockdown. Many of them take place because of incidents that do not involve the school directly and are not threatening to the school or students; however, there might be an emergency situation or police incident near the school and officials want to be sure our students and staff stay inside the building as not to hinder or interfere with their jobs.
Please be aware that some students might be sharing that we are in lockdown and the reasons they believe led to the lockdown before you hear about it from the school. Word can travel fast with technology, where the school needs to take many things into consideration before sending out a communication to our staff and parents. We will communicate what we can with you and will provide an official word of what is taking place. Rumors and theories can run rampant in situations such as these. Stay near your phone/email to receive official correspondence from the District.
We will alert you when a lockdown takes place and when it is clear. See procedures below for what might happen if a lockdown is taking place at various times of the day.

What happens when:

A lockdown takes place at the end of the day

If a lockdown takes place at the end of the day, we will keep students inside the buildings and halt the buses until we are given the all-clear. If you are in your car waiting for your child, he/she will not be dismissed until the situation is clear. You are welcome to wait in your car or clear the premises and return after receiving the all-clear message.

A lockdown takes place during a mid-day pick-up time

If you are already inside the building waiting to pick up your child, you may be asked to wait in a separate area until we receive word that it is okay for you and your child to leave. This is to keep you and your child safe and to follow the wishes of outside officials.

Snow Day Cancellations / Delays Information

How Snow Days are Determined

On mornings when the weather looks to be questionable, the superintendent and transportation supervisor both take to the roads in different areas of our district to assess conditions. We take a number of things into consideration when determining whether or not to close school.

Road conditions (ice, deep snow, unplowed)
Visibility
Forecasted conditions
Temperatures and wind chill

They travel the roads between 4:30 - 5:00 a.m. We aim to make decisions by 5:30 a.m. and no later than 6:00 a.m. It is rare that we will close the night before. It might happen, but with the unpredictability of Michigan weather, a lot can change by the morning.

Getting Snow Day Notifications

We will alert you to school closings or delays in many ways. This assures us that if one channel fails, several others are in place to alert you:

Phone alerts from Otsego Public Schools (be sure your contact information is updated in Infinite Campus)
Otsego Public Schools app will send out a push notification (the app is free on iTunes, and Google Play)
News stations (WWMT, WOODTV 8, FOX 17)
OPS Facebook page
OPS Twitter Page

There have been times when one of the above has not worked; we push this information out on several channels so that notification is always possible. It's best practice to pay attention to a couple of the notification systems to get the latest information in case of an issue.

Things to Think About

It is Michigan, so snow-covered roads aren’t enough to close school. We encourage all drivers to slow down, give themselves extra time to get to school and be careful.

Conditions vary across the district. Our district covers 85 square miles so there will be times when road conditions where you are located are better or worse and might seem out of sync with the decision made.

Our superintendent makes the best decision with the information at hand at the time.

We will not have a 2-hour delay on a delayed start Wednesday; it is possible, however, that we would close. That decision might be made later that a day with a normal schedule.

Plan ahead, think about childcare plans now. Also know that our BASE program is open, unless otherwise specified, on snow days. All students report to Dix Street Elementary on snow days.

Main Menu

District

Utility Links

In This Section