On February 14 a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people, including students and staff were killed. Westside has been fortunate enough to never undergo an intruder in the building. Before the shooting, on January 31, Westside had a drill for a lockdown for students and staff to practice.

“If we did have an intruder, we would sound the announcement over emergency announcement system, and like we practiced, we want classroom doors to be locked, we want people to be out of sight as much as possible, and if people were not in a classroom, to try to get into a room,” Westside high school principal Jay Opperman said. “The latest thing is that if you have a route of escape, that’s actually one of the recommended things to do. You want to make sure you have a route of escape that is safe.”

To let students and staff be aware of an intruder, Opperman said that classrooms have an emergency call button that automatically connects the caller to the office through an intercom system.

“Our intercom system has just been updated and we’ve been fixing things,” Opperman said. “I think we have methods of communication [where] a call could be made to the office absolutely between our intercom system and phones that exist in the room either by staff or students.”

Opperman said that they’ve changed some aspects of security to really try and better identify who is entering the building. This includes the use of checking in and putting on a sticker or a name tag. Administration has tried to reduce the ease in and out of the building. But sometimes students are too willing to let others in the building.

“During the school day there are really only two doors truly that should be used,” Opperman said. “Unfortunately,  we are not good at using those two doors solely. The problem is that we’re probably maybe at times too comfortable, and we’re maybe a little too willing to think, ‘oh,  I’ll let my friend in.’ That happens, I know it happens. Those are things that decrease our safety level. Convenience and security kind of work against each other so we have to put up a little more inconvenience to be more safe.”

Opperman said that communication when there is concern is one of the best methods of safety to have.

“If you see something or hear something, tell someone,” Opperman said. “I want to stay in the culture that says ‘I’m going to call somebody now, I’m going to get hold of somebody right away’.”