Anything can happen anywhere, and usually the people in charge of a public area will have protocols they follow if something happens or goes wrong. Gardner Edgerton is no exception for that.

Tony Taylor is in charge of the emergency protocols for the high school, and if someone gets hurt, the nurses Judy McDowell, Kristi Dye take care of them and help with any injuries

“We have three main ones and that’s the tornado, the fire, and then our crisis drills, and we do each of them,” Taylor said. “The reason we do those is through the state, the state requires us to do them,.” 

For everyone’s safety the state makes every school do emergency drills just in case there is a real incident of an emergency happening. Each year the high school does four fire drills, two Tornado drills, and three crisis drills.

“We talk to the teachers at the beginning of the year, when we come in for in service. I have to talk to the teacher on each of those [protocols] and then talk about how we do them, ” Taylor said. “We have a crisis handbook that each teacher has, so that they know if they need to they can look at it.  Then in each room there is a map of what they’re supposed to do for fire, and tornado, crisis drill, it’s always in your room [classroom].”

Taylor is in charge of scheduling and keeping track of all the records of the drills, and he has to run the drills whenever they might have them. Taylor is also in charge of training the teacher for each protocol.

“The one we do the most often is the fire drill. People know that one because it’s the easiest, you walk out of the building with your group,” Taylor said. “The crisis drill is probably the one that’s the least, because it’s the one that we haven’t does as often. But you guys do know about it.”

Taylor, along with all the other teachers are always looking to add new things and improve the emergency protocols to make the school a safer place.