EPCUSD 401 Update
Open Letter on School Safety in the Elmwood Park CUSD 401
March 15, 2023
Since the incident on March 6 at Elmwood Park High School, the Elmwood Park School District 401 Board and Administration have heard a great deal of feedback and questions about how EPHS administrators handled and communicated about the situation. At tonight’s Board of Education meeting, we expect that this topic will be a focus of many of the comments made during public participation.
We want to assure you that it is everyone’s top priority to provide a safe school environment that protects our students and staff. Our goal in such situations is to de-escalate any threat, protect the well-being of all students and staff, and prevent panic. Like you, we are so grateful that the handling of the situation last Monday did not result in physical harm to anyone.
Most of the questions and concerns we have heard center around why we did not call a lockdown. If a lockdown was called while the student presenting a threat was in the building, all students would have entered the nearest classroom. This would have made it challenging to find and mitigate the threat. It could have also potentially locked students in a room with the threat.
However, we do believe that it would have been appropriate to call a lockdown both at EPHS and surrounding schools immediately once the student left the building. This lockdown would have been in place only for a few minutes until the police apprehended the student outside the building.
At tonight’s Board meeting, the Board President plans to announce that the District administration will be directed to review our safety plans and protocols and present clear decision-making procedures regarding our crisis response to a threat in the schools, including the decision to call a lockdown, for discussion at our April 19 Board meeting.
We also heard concerns that the District’s initial communications on this matter were sent to parents and staff via email and not seen in a timely manner. That is because the information shared was sent after the incident was mitigated. In this case, because the situation was quickly resolved, we did not proactively address it with students during the school day.
As previously communicated by Dr. Gauthier, moving forward, information will be sent out in multiple modalities. This means that parents and staff members will receive a text message or phone call alerting them to an urgent email communication from the District. The Administration will present to the Board at the April meeting its plan on what, when and how to communicate to students at each grade-level building following such an urgent incident in our schools.
In closing, we want to thank our law enforcement partners for their quick response and the support and guidance they have provided to EPHS staff and students this week. We continue to partner with them to review our current procedures and policies to determine if any need to be enhanced and/or updated.
We also want to express appreciation to our EPHS teachers and District union leaders who collaborated with us to plan Monday’s activities to help our learning community heal, process and move forward from this incident.
Thank you to everyone who has shared comments, feedback and concerns—we all care very deeply about the safety and well-being of our students, staff and schools. Following tonight’s meeting, the District will be updating the FAQ on the website and we encourage you to check back for updates.