‘I was about to cry’: Families spend hours in fear during lockdown at Edmonton school

From infrastructure to training, the province wants schools to be more secure after the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

An Edmonton parent says a recent lockdown at his daughter’s school left him and his wife “terrified” for their child’s safety.

The lockdown at Ross Sheppard High School was triggered by a weapons complaint to police at about 12:30 p.m. on Friday.

Bahadir Koprulu’s daughter is in Grade 10 there. He and his wife received messages from the school notifying them of the lockdown, and saying their child was safe and that “everyone is quiet and staying out of sight.”

“It’s just like in the movies or in the news,” Koprulu said. “A few months ago, there was a school shooting back home in Turkiye. We were really scared.”

Koprulu rushed to Ross Sheppard, which was surrounded by police cruisers and officers in tactical gear. With no one allowed on school grounds, all he and the other parents there could do was watch and wait.

The lockdown lasted about two hours. He said neither the police nor school would offer details on what was happening.

“The police told me everyone is safe, like we shouldn’t be worried,” Koprulu said. “But how can you not be worried?”

While his daughter had texted that she was OK during the lockdown, Koprulu was still overcome with relief when she walked out.

“I don’t like to cry, but I was about to cry when I saw her,” he added.

After it ended, police reported that the weapon that triggered the lockdown was found to be an imitation gun, and that there were no injuries or arrests made.

Edmonton Public Schools said it used the division’s emergency response three times during the event and sent an email with additional information “following the incident.”

However, Koprulu said he learned of the fake gun from the news before anything came from the school.

Criminologist Dan Jones says good communication is a critical piece of emergency response.

“How do we communicate with parents so parents aren’t panicking, or so parents aren’t coming and then interfering with the police’s ability to get into the institution,” said Jones, who works for Edmonton’s NorQuest College.

“In those circumstances, you have to be fluid with your information,” he added. “You don’t want to harm investigative integrity, but at the same time, you need that safety and secure feeling from those parents.”

On Monday, Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides told CTV News Edmonton that communication during emergency situations was one area the province found needed improvement during a recent review into school safety protocols.

“When you think about emergency preparedness, you’re planning for the actual emergency, preventing it, and dealing with it when it actually occurs,” Nicolaides said. “The reopening afterwards sometimes can be a little bit of an afterthought.”

The review was carried out to help inform new provincial guidelines for school security and was prompted by the school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., that killed eight students in February.

The new regulations require school boards to create an emergency framework for schools to create their own critical emergency plans, including threat identification, staff training, post-incident support, and drills and exercises.

Jones says many people don’t like talking about violence in schools but that lockdown drills, like fire drills, are critical to ensure students, staff and parents know exactly what to do in a worst-case scenario.

“We’ve been talking about this since Columbine, and multiple school shootings have happened in the U.S. and Canada, with Tumbler Ridge being the most recent,” Jones said.

“It’s crappy that these students have to go through this, but it’s the reality. And if we don’t face the reality, we’re going to see another tragedy,” he added.

Nicolaides said the province will give $20 million to school divisions for safety-related infrastructure upgrades, with another $2 million earmarked for staff training.

School boards will have until Jan. 4 to create their emergency management framework; schools will have until April 5 to put their individual plans in place.

Early childhood operators are required to follow the same guidelines on the same schedule.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Chelan Skulski