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This month, Belton ISD is transitioning to the I Love You Guys Foundation Standard Response Protocol (SRP) for emergency response language. The Texas School Safety Center promotes the SRP as a communication tool that can help us ensure consistent, shared language and actions among all students, staff and first responders. The SRP is not a replacement but an enhancement of the existing safety plans. Staff has received training on the SRP, and teachers have been encouraged to present a poster that utilizes the new language to their students as a part of their regular review of classroom and/or campus procedures. As the district transitions to the updated system, some language used to describe and instruct behaviors during incidents both inside and outside of the schools will change. The five terms now adopted include lockout, lockdown, evacuate, shelter and hold. The SRP is the latest measure in the district’s efforts to comprehensively address safety and security, and is one part of the District Improvement Plan adopted by the Board of Trustees last August. The DIP serves as a blueprint for how the district will continue to address priority areas, including important safety and security elements. Some of the measures adopted this school year include: the use of magnetic locks at every campus to limit access from the office into the campus, installing over 500 locks for classroom doors to ensure that all doors can be locked quickly and easily from the inside, required training sessions in Citizens Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE) and Stop The Bleed for employees, and implementing a new anti-bullying and safety reporting system called Anonymous Alerts.