Safety Drill At School Frightens

At least some students at Santa Fe’s Ortiz Middle School were rattled Wednesday morning during what turned out to be a safety drill.

Some parents received either phone calls or text messages from their children who didn’t know that the exercise was only a drill.

Gabe Romero, director of safety and security for Santa Fe Public Schools, said such drills were something the school district does routinely to prepare for a potential emergency.

Seventh-grader Estevan Segura told KOAT that the drill “felt kind of scary, like someone was going to shoot up the school.”

He huddled under a table in the library with several other students and he said they started calling and texting their parents.

“I was just like mom, mom, we’re in a lockdown,” Segura said.

The drills are unannounced to test the system, according to Romero.

“The children don’t know that it’s a drill. We don’t want to do it for real the first time,” he said.

Romero said students are supposed to remain in place and take shelter in their classroom during the lockdown drills and not make any movement.

“We try to keep kids from texting so they don’t create hysteria,” he said.

But apparently that’s what happened in this case. Romero said one or more students called or texted their parents to let them know something was going on at the school, causing some alarm.

Romero said the school district routinely sends out robo calls to parents once a drill is completed, but in this case some parents were notified by their children before the calls went out.

The lockdown lasted for a half-hour.

Segura told KOAT he was making an escape plan — to stay near the window “so if they come you can pop open the window, pop open the screen and just run out.”