Emergency Procedures
The safety of our students and staff is our number one priority. The information below will assist parents and families in the event of an emergency. For your own safety and the safety of your child, please do not come to the school to retrieve students unless notified to do so.
Please check our district homepage for emergency alert notices. To report an emergency at one of our schools or facilities, first call 911, then report it to District Office at 608-649-HIVE.
Communication
In the event of a snowstorm, tornado, cybersecurity incident, threat to campus, or other emergency event, The Richland School District will implement safety procedures and may change school start or dismissal times for student safety. Here are the ways we communicate emergency information:
- Email notifications. Please provide the school with your current email address or update it in Skyward.
- Automated phone calls and text messages. Please provide your school with current telephone numbers to reach you and other emergency contacts or update this information in Skyward.
- Announcements on district and school websites.
- Announcements on social media. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
- Announcements on TV and radio.
What to Expect
Here is a list of the type of schedule changes you can expect during weather-related events or other emergencies. Making a decision about weather-related school closures is always difficult. We take the decision-making process very seriously. Learn more about how we make decisions on changing the school schedule.
Learn more about safety procedures, such as lockdown, shelter-in-place, and evacuation, and in what types of emergencies they are used in this document.
This Family Communication Chart illustrates what modes of communication we use during a threat to campus, depending on the situation.
See our Communications Department page for more information regarding communications and how to update your contact information via Skyward. To learn more about our District-based Community Resource Officer, please see this page.
*IMPORTANT NOTE*: We have learned from other schools that in an extreme emergency, local cell phone towers often become overwhelmed by the increased activity and go “down”. We recommend connecting phones to WiFi and turning off cell data in an emergency situation to help prevent this scenario and better allow emergency responders to communicate. Please be aware that cell tower issues may cause undeliverable/delayed communication from the District via phone/text.
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