EMAIL DETAILS

Dear Parents,
I am writing to update you on the evacuation of our Wisconsin Avenue campus this past Thursday, October 18. As you are no doubt already aware, the School received a suspicious phone call that morning around 10:15 a.m. Although the threat was not specific, the nature of the call led us to evacuate all of our buildings. While the evacuation was underway, the source of the call was verified and the caller was questioned by law enforcement. Following an investigation, they were able to determine that our campus was not at risk and students were allowed to return to class.

As you will remember from our August mailing, Sidwell Friends does have a comprehensive crisis plan that addresses a number of different scenarios, and thanks to our drills, the students, faculty and staff followed procedures and evacuated the buildings quickly. The importance of quiet during the incident was understood and everyone cooperated beautifully.


Our AlertNow system was used to send basic information to parents about the situation. However, the rapidly changing nature of the details we were receiving made it difficult for us to update you more completely while the incident was ongoing. Please be assured that if the situation had deteriorated to the point where students had needed to move off campus, you would certainly have been informed as to where and when to pick up your child. You should know that specific locations have been arranged for that purpose with neighboring institutions.


We are conducting an internal review of how the situation was handled, as we do after each emergency drill over the course of the year. We welcome your comments as part of that process. Please direct your suggestions either to your divisional principal or to Ellis Turner, Associate Head of School (turnere@sidwell.edu<mailto:turnere@sidwell.edu> ) This is also a good time to ensure that your information is correctly registered with AlertNow; instructions for adding or modifying that information may be found on the Parent Portal of the SFS website.


Please join me in celebrating the maturity displayed by our students during this episode.


Sincerely,


Tom Farquhar