Emergency Communications

Our first priority in an emergency situation is to ensure the safety of our students and staff, and secure all campuses and facilities. It is the responsibility of every district employee to ensure student safety.

School and district leadership work closely with the Ocean Springs Police Department and other partners when a critical incident affects a school. We do not make decisions based solely on rumor or conjecture. Each threat is swiftly and thoroughly investigated to determine its credibility. That process can take time, because it can involve search warrants, interviews, home visits, and more. 

 

This can be a difficult time for families. You may have heard of a situation from your student, but as it is investigated, you likely will not receive much information from official sources like the school, district or police department. This is intentional, because communicating before we have all of the facts can delay or impede the investigation and unnecessarily escalate a situation. We rely on you to trust us, and have patience, during this time.

 

While it can be tempting, please avoid speculating or participating in the spread of misinformation online and in messaging. This creates unnecessary stress and concern for others, and it can put your student, our staff, and campus in danger.

State and federal law, as well as district policy, restrict what information is public about students and investigations. When it comes to students, very little information can be shared publicly — and districts must comply with data practices and investigatory requirements. That means we are often unable to share any information about a student who is involved in an incident, including whether they are a student at our school, whether they are attending on a certain day and any disciplinary action they will receive.

 

In a moment when you don’t have all the information you want to have, please know we are making decisions to keep our students and staff safe, hold people accountable for their actions, and when possible, help them to learn from their mistakes. To do this most effectively — and legally — we cannot share most of the details that could make some families feel more fully informed.

Once we gather facts and develop appropriate messages for each unique situation, we begin a second period of reviewing those messages for any inaccurate or misleading information, having them reviewed by partners and our legal advisors to be sure we comply with legal requirements, and determine who should receive a message. At times, it is only a small group of individuals directly impacted; other times, it may be the entire school community.

 

If a message needs to go to the entire school community or a large group of people, it must be loaded into our mass communication systems and sent. While you wait to receive a message, there are often dozens of school leaders, district administrators, law enforcement and legal professionals working as fast as they possibly can to get information to you. It matters to us that you are informed quickly, and we ask for grace and understanding as we make that happen.

 

OSSD will first notify staff and parents via email and/or phone call. The district will then publish information on social media and communicate with local media, if necessary.