Each year, Edina High School’s administration organizes safety drills for lockdown, fire, and stay-put situations to prepare students in case of an emergency.

Zephyrus: Minnesota law requires a certain number of safety drills annually. How does EHS meet this number?

Michael Pretasky: We do five evacuation drills, five lockdown drills, one severe weather drill, and there’s one you don’t know about because it doesn’t really impact students. It’s called a secure [drill]. The reason we do the secure [drill] is when there’s some danger outside of the building and we have a list of staff that go to each door. [It] doesn’t mean that classes have to be interrupted at all, but it’s good practice.

Z.: How do you decide when to perform each drill?

M.P.: I work with a committee as part of our building safety team, and it includes teachers as well as other student-support staff. We talk about when would be the most effective to [run]… we don’t want to run a drill during an MCA test, you know. But we also want students and staff to practice at times that are sometimes inconvenient, because that’s how emergencies can happen. We come up with a drill plan for the year.

Z.: When and how do you review safety protocols?

M.P.: So our safety protocols… are called standard response protocols, and we review them with the entire staff during teacher workshop week… And then we have something called a BERT team—Building Emergency Response Team. We meet four times during the year and we talk through hypothetical scenarios.

This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on May 8, 2025