“There is an intruder on campus.”

A message like this one is the first thing students and faculty members hear over the loudspeakers when an intruder is noticed on the school campus.

“We don’t like intruders. That’s our policy,” Kitchens said. “Anyone who walks through our campus is supposed to stop in our main office and pick up a badge so that we can identify them if need be.”

Kitchens said this badge system is useful, especially in combination with the nearby Piedmont Police Department.

“If there’s a serious intruder or danger, they’re going to come on campus and they’re going to have to identify the good people from the bad people,” Kitchens said.

Piedmont Police Chief Rikki Goede said that because Piedmont is only 1.7 square miles, the Piedmont Police Department could respond to a school campus threat in a matter of seconds.

Goede said that after the Columbine shootings, schools nationwide practiced active shooter procedures that involved the police and SWAT teams, but that lockdown drills and shelter-in-place drills are now more common.

“The idea is that officers are trained in any active shooting to immediately go in and stop the threat,” Goede said.

If there were an active shooter, the police would immediately move in to neutralize the threat. In the case of a barricade, Piedmont policemen would surround the school perimeter and call in the Alameda County SWAT team to assist. Goede said the response time for support from Oakland would be a matter of minutes.

However, she said a more likely scenario is for a teacher or administrator to call in suspecting a student of possessing a gun. Goede said the scenario is also highly unlikely in Piedmont, but happened in a lot of schools in San Jose where she worked for 16 years.

In this situation, Goede said teachers would be notified to keep teaching, but to lock their doors and make sure nobody leaves until the police find the person that supposedly has the gun.

Though Goede said identifying students in the larger cities where she worked was difficult, Piedmont has the advantage of a small student body.

“Here, everybody knows everybody, so it makes it really easy,” she said.

Science teacher John Savage has taught at schools with higher security.

“The school that I worked at in Virginia had one armed police officer at the school every day, every moment of the day, in addition to three security officers,” Savage said. “There was the idea that those individuals could be approached if something was going on.”

Savage sees a difference between the culture at the school in Virginia and Piedmont.

“We’re talking about the incredibly rare event of someone showing up, who’s goal it is to inflict as much pain as possible,” Savage said. “Will a police officer, or a security guard, or whoever, be able to stop someone who is absolutely determined to cause so much harm? And the answer is: you don’t know until it happens.”

Savage said that the current school policy of gathering all the students in the room, locking the door, and staying as silent as is possible, seems to be an effective way of stalling or stopping an intruder and protecting the largest amount of students.

“That’s obviously the end goal, protecting as many students as possible,” Savage said.

Junior Mara Blumenstein thinks that the intruder drills, which replicate the school’s intruder protocol, are definitely useful and necessary for student safety.

“I don’t know what else the school could do that would be better,” Blumenstein said. “It’s impossible to safeguard against everything,”

Kitchens is unsure how drastic school security measures should be.

“We could lock this place down,” Kitchens said. “We could keep people here and have a closed campus like most high schools, and not let people leave, and not let people come on, except through a gate. That, to me, is a little draconian. Is it worth it? What we’re trying to do is find the right balance.”

Savage said Piedmont High is a very safe place, especially with the Piedmont Police Department in such close proximity. Kitchens, too, feels the benefit of the school’s safe environment.

“We don’t have many, if any, fights. We don’t have many, if any, disruptions that you might have at other schools,” Kitchens said. “We can focus on the business at hand without worrying about these other distractions.”

Junior Allyson Chan said that she agrees with Kitchens’ assessment of the school climate.

“I don’t feel threatened at all in school,” Chan said. “PHS is rather small, so I know pretty much all of the people at school.”

Kitchens, always with his emergency manual close to his desk, said he prioritizes student safety.

“We have to focus on our environment as a whole,” he said. “What’s most important is that students are safe and feel safe, because when they feel safe, then they can worry about studying.”