“The Cherry Creek School District’s Comprehensive Safety and Security Plan incorporates physical and psychological safety to ensure a rapid and coordinated response to danger and mental health needs at every school to help prevent school violence,” according to cherrycreekschools.org.

The CCSD’s plan was developed based on best practices provided by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, Aurora Police Department, Greenwood Village Police Department, Cherry Hills Police Department, Denver Police Department, Homeland Security, FEMA, Colorado Emergency Management, and the Colorado School Safety Resource Center.

Once assessments were made the chiefs of all departments met to discuss ways to enhance the safety of students.

Amongst the chiefs’ assessments, they decided to implement the Raptor Management System.   Raptor is a visitor management system that scans a driver’s license and/or state ID and checks the information against the National Sex Offender database. If no match is found, the system will print a visitor’s sticker with a picture identifying them as an approved visitor.

Alongside the Raptor Management System, according to cherrycreekschools.org, visitors need to show government-issued identification before being allowed inside schools. There are also updated surveillance systems inside schools and buses. Staff receive upgraded radios systems and additional training.

According to cherrycreekschools.org “the group proceeded to design and agree to a common response protocaol, which includes a common language (secure perimeter vs. lockout), the mapping of school sites, and communication links to eliminate confusion when more than one emergency agency responds to a single incident”.

All of this training and new protocol was put to the test when more than two dozen emergency police and fire agencies from around the Denver Metro Area along with personnel from Buckley Air Force Base came together for a daylong training at Sky Vista Middle School, in October before issuing the new protocol requirements.

This exercise was one of the largest ever conducted in the metro area, according to Cherry Creek School District Safety and Security Director Randy Councell.

“We want to do something of this magnitude and size yearly,” Councell said. “We want to include new tactics and new techniques that are being developed. This is how we get practice and make sure it works. This is the time to find out, rather than during a crisis”.

According to cherryreekschools.org, each school has a functioning school safety design team that monitors the individual building plan for both psychological and physical safety, and a crisis response and recovery team that oversees and implements the school’s crisis response plan when needed.  
In the last three years, schools have conducted more than 2,000 safety drills which include lockdown, fire, weather, shelter in place, secure perimeter, and evacuation drills.