Our top priority is to provide safe spaces for our children to learn and educators to teach. STM takes every proactive step possible in order to prevent serious incidents from happening in the first place.

Although emergencies during the school day are extremely rare, we have established clear emergency protocols and communication procedures so all students and staff know how to quickly and confidently make their way to safety in the event of an emergency.

While schools across the district have worked to build a culture of safety to prevent serious incidents, in the event of an emergency, these steps will help schools to be prepared to respond effectively.

Indiana Code requires each school to conduct monthly fire drills, one severe weather drill per semester, and one man-made occurrence drill per semester.

The State of Indiana requires each school corporation in the State to have at least one certified school safety specialist. The School Town of Munster has ____ certified safety specialists.

To become certified, an individual must attend the School Safety Specialist Academy for five days of rigorous training.  To maintain certification, each specialist must attend two days of training each school year. Trainings are based on national best practices in school safety and security.

Our students have access to the STOPit mobile app, which has two simple but powerful features. 

Report can be used by students to report incidents to school contacts anonymously.

Messenger can be used to engage in anonymous two-way communication with school contacts.

Both Report and Messenger empower students to stand up for themselves and for one another. Students have the power to help put an end to harmful and inappropriate behavior they see online through social media and other means. They can use STOPit to reach out for help if they or a peer are facing a personal crisis or experiencing bullying, abuse or are otherwise in need of assistance. Our goal with STOPit is to create safer and kinder school communities both online and off.

No student information is needed to use STOPit. The only way personally identifiable information will be accessible through STOPit is if a student voluntarily includes it within the content of a report or message.

The School Town of Munster and STOPit are committed to protecting the privacy of student data.  You may review STOPit’s Privacy Policy for details, including more information on how anonymous reporting works.

More information and resources can be found online at stopitsolutions.com

The School Town of Munster uses Standard Response Protocol (SRP) in the event of a safety concern. Such events 

SRP is a uniform, planned and practiced set of actions for emergencies developed by the nonprofit “I Love You Guys” Foundation. Founded in 2006 by Ellen and John-Michael Keyes, the “I Love You Guys” Foundation has become the go-to resource for schools to unify communication between staff, students and first responders. Schools around the country have adopted SRP, and the “I Love You Guys” Foundation supplies resources at no cost.

Should an emergency take place at a STM school, students and staff are told which SRP action to take. Drills and safety presentations are done annually throughout the District so that students and staff will know what to do.

Members of our safety team meet on a regular basis with first responders to ensure that everyone is on the same page with regards to the established protocols. 

In the event that SRP is used during a school day, parents can expect to receive communication from either their child’s school or the district office. Those notifications will be updated as frequently as possible if a situation is ongoing. 

If a situation requires a school building to be evacuated, STM will activate the Standard Reunification Method. This method is an organized, planned series of steps that relocates students to another building where parents/guardians can pick up their children. STM's reunification team receives training annually. In the event reunification is required, parents/guardians will receive detailed information regarding the location of the reunification site as well as any other details that can be shared at that time. 

• Follow the instructions given in our message. This might include an alternate pick-up location for your child or a change to the schools’ dismissal times.
• Help keep the schools’ phone lines open by not calling in and asking for additional information. Feel free to reply to the email you receive and we will try to respond to you as quickly as possible. We will also send updates through the above channels.
• To help cut down on misinformation in the community, share the district’s message with local friends and neighbors who might not have received it — especially those without children attending STM schools.

Lastly, please make sure your contact information is always up to date in PowerSchool. Your email address and phone number(s) listed in your PowerSchool account are the ones we use when sending out our messages.

Thank you for doing your part to keep the communication lines open and for sharing accurate and factual messages with those around you.

STM will utilize our mass notification system as well as our District website to communicate the facts of the situation with families.  The most used channels are email, phone call and the District website.

• Email: 
  If you regularly receive non-emergency emails from STM, that means we have an up-to-date email address for you. If you have not received an email from the district in the past two weeks, please contact your school’s main office secretary to provide us with a current email address. If we do not have a current email address for you, you will not receive information via email in an emergency.
   
• Website:
  We post timely messages about emergency situations on the district’s homepage - www.munster.us.
   
• Phone:  
  Our automatic phone system will call all of the numbers we have on file for you in order, except for your work number. Please check your PowerSchool account to make sure we have up-to-date phone numbers for you. If you are a parent or student and need your login ID or password for the PowerSchool, please contact the main office of your school.

If we do not have a current phone number for you,
you will not receive a phone call in an emergency.

PLEASE NOTE:  We generally do not post information about emergencies to our district social media accounts.  Therefore, in an emergency, we rely on the more immediate and direct methods of communication outlined above.