Preparedness Without Fear: What Effective School Safety Drills Look Like

Educational institutions ramped up their readiness initiatives and broadened the scope of emergency exercises after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy. While the objective was straightforward – ensuring that both personnel and students were equipped to respond to crises – the true difficulty lay in understanding that effective preparedness is defined by quality and improvement, not merely by increasing the frequency of drills.

School systems across the country intensified their focus on crisis readiness. Legislative bodies updated mandates, districts broadened their training protocols, and emergency exercises were integrated into the academic calendar.

In Florida, legislation now requires a sworn police officer to be present on every public school campus. While alternative security options exist, the core mandate ensures that a trained professional is specifically assigned to each school to bolster safety. This shift was rooted in a logical and vital premise: if readiness is the key to protecting lives, then increasing our commitment to practice must yield better results in an actual crisis.

Like many things in school safety, the idea made perfect sense on paper. The challenge came when those ideas met real schools, real students, and real people. For many years, schools conducted fire drills far more frequently than emergency drills. Following MSD, emergency drill requirements increased significantly in many states, bringing lockdowns, evacuations, and other emergency exercises into the regular rhythm of the school year. Schools that once practiced these procedures only occasionally were suddenly conducting them on a routine basis.

The assumption seemed logical: if some training is good, more training must be better. Over time, however, many schools discovered a problem. Students and staff became so accustomed to emergency drills that they often viewed them as routine interruptions rather than meaningful opportunities to practice critical procedures. What some referred to as "Code Red Fatigue" began to emerge. Familiarity is important, but excessive repetition without purpose can breed complacency rather than preparedness.

Some schools attempted to solve that problem by making drills more realistic, aiming to build trust and calmness. The hope was that realism would create urgency and improve performance without causing unnecessary anxiety. Instead, it often produced unintended consequences. Students became frightened. Staff members experienced anxiety. Parents raised concerns. In some cases, the emotional impact of the exercise overshadowed the lesson it was intended to teach.

"The purpose of a drill is not to scare people. The purpose of a drill is to teach people."

That distinction is important because preparedness is about building confidence, not instilling fear. Preparedness is built through repetition, familiarity, and confidence. Fear may create a memorable experience, but it does not necessarily improve performance. In fact, attaching anxiety or trauma to a drill can work against the very objective the exercise is intended to achieve.

Many schools host seasonal events that address potentially frightening subjects in ways appropriate for children. A Halloween celebration may include ghosts, goblins, and haunted themes, yet the goal is not to create fear. The goal is to create familiarity, understanding, and enjoyment in a controlled environment. The event acknowledges the existence of something that might otherwise be intimidating without allowing fear to dominate the experience.

School drills should follow a similar principle. Students should understand why they are practicing procedures and appreciate the seriousness of the situations those procedures are designed to address. At the same time, they should not leave the exercise frightened or overwhelmed. The same is true for educators, who increasingly carry significant safety responsibilities while continuing to fulfill their primary mission of educating students.

One of the most valuable lessons borrowed from law enforcement training is that understanding how people respond under stress helps staff feel more competent and confident in their safety procedures, reducing uncertainty during emergencies.

Understanding those realities changed the way many schools approached procedures. Consider something as simple as a classroom door. For years, some emergency plans required teachers to hear a threat, move to the classroom door, retrieve a key, and lock the door. On paper, the procedure seemed reasonable. In reality, it depended upon a fine motor skill at precisely the moment when fine motor skills are most likely to degrade.

The solution was simple: keep classroom doors locked.

Following the findings of the Sandy Hook investigation, many districts began reexamining long-standing classroom security practices. The investigation highlighted a critical reality: locked classroom doors saved lives. In Florida, the importance of secured classroom doors was ultimately codified in state requirements and school safety procedures. Rather than expecting perfect performance during the most stressful moments imaginable, the procedure was redesigned to account for predictable human behavior.

"The best procedures are not built around ideal human performance. They are built around predictable human behavior."

For school boards, superintendents, and district leaders, this distinction matters. The number of drills conducted often measures preparedness, the amount of training delivered, or compliance with statutory requirements. While those measures are important, they do not necessarily reflect whether procedures will function as intended during a crisis. The most effective preparedness programs are not always the most complex. They are the programs built around realistic expectations, predictable human behavior, and procedures that remain effective when stress, fear, and uncertainty are at their highest.

The lesson extends far beyond classroom doors. Once schools begin designing procedures around predictable human behavior rather than idealized human performance, other long-standing practices also deserve examination. In many cases, the question is no longer whether a procedure works. The question is whether it still reflects the realities of today's threats and how people actually respond to them.

Perhaps no lesson illustrates this principle better than the relationship between fire drills and emergency procedures.

For decades, fire drills followed a straightforward philosophy: evacuate immediately. Students lined up, exited the building, and moved to designated locations as quickly and safely as possible. In many schools, fire drills gradually became a race to see how fast the building could be emptied. Speed became the measure of success.

Looking back, that mindset unintentionally pushed situational awareness into the background. Following MSD, schools across the country began asking a difficult question:

What if the danger was directly outside the classroom, along the evacuation route, or even on campus itself?

Educators recognized that traditional emergency procedures sometimes approached risk from different directions. Fire drills emphasized movement. Lockdown procedures emphasized assessment.

The issue became particularly personal for me because my son was a student at MSD that day. When the fire alarm sounded, his class did exactly what students had been trained to do countless times before: evacuate. Moments later, after hearing sounds that were not immediately recognized as gunfire, students were directed back toward the building. My son chose a different course of action and fled the area.

That experience reinforced an important lesson. Emergency procedures should not compete with one another. They should complement one another.

In my district, we eventually incorporated elements of the same assessment process used during lockdown procedures into our fire drill procedures. We were not trying to slow down the evacuation. We introduced assessment into a process that had become almost automatic through years of repetition without sacrificing situational awareness. Teachers still evacuated students, but they also accounted for them, observed conditions, and applied situational awareness before moving.

The goal was not to delay; the goal was better decision-making. That lesson extended well beyond fire drills. The most effective preparedness programs are those in which procedures work together, reinforce one another, and reflect how people actually behave under stress.

Every trainer I know has used the phrase, "How you train is how you perform." There is a lot of truth in that statement. There is also a dirty little secret that trainers rarely talk about. The last two unspoken words are "we hope."

Training matters. Practice matters. Repetition matters. Yet anyone who has spent enough time in emergency response understands that no amount of training guarantees performance. Human beings remain human beings. Some will excel. Some will struggle. Most will fall somewhere in between. That reality should not discourage preparedness. It should encourage realistic preparedness.

"Preparedness is not created by fear. It is created through confidence, repetition, and practice."

Every drill ends the same way. Students return to class. Teachers return to teaching. The routine of the school day resumes. That is exactly as it should be.

The purpose of preparedness is not to keep students and staff focused on emergencies. It is to give them confidence that if an emergency occurs, they will know what to do. Effective drills create familiarity. Effective procedures reduce uncertainty. Effective training builds confidence.

For district leaders, the challenge is finding the balance between preparedness and fear. Too little preparation leaves people vulnerable. Too much emphasis on danger can undermine the very sense of safety schools are trying to create. The goal is not to remind students and staff that danger exists. They already know that. The goal is to create systems, procedures, and training that help them feel capable, informed, and prepared.

Ultimately, the strongest preparedness programs are not measured by how frightened participants become during an exercise. They are measured by how confident they feel afterward. When drills are done well, students leave feeling informed, educators leave feeling prepared, and learning continues uninterrupted. That confidence, not fear, is what preparedness should look like.

This article was contributed by Lieutenant Frank Fanelli, a veteran law enforcement leader with more than 33 years of experience, including over 25 years in K–12 school policing with the School District of Palm Beach County Police Department. He has led the development and implementation of numerous school safety initiatives involving crisis response, violence prevention, emergency preparedness, school-based policing, and campus security operations. His work focuses on helping schools build practical safety systems that account for both operational realities and human behavior.