School Safety

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 

• 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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.