A shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead, sent shockwaves through the country Wednesday and forced administrators to re-evaluate their safety plans.

The shooting marked the second fatal school shooting in 2018 after two students were killed and 21 others injured Jan. 23 in Benton, Kentucky.

“We took the first 20 minutes of class to let kids talk through it and process what happened and look at the contingencies,” St. Aloysius principal Buddy Strickland said of his school’s reaction to the Parkland shooting. “What would we do if it happened here?”

Having an action plan for active shooters has become a necessity for schools big and small, and following Wednesday’s tragedy school leaders throughout Vicksburg are working to make sure their plans are updated and their faculty knows what the plan includes.

“At the beginning of every school year you talk with them about your security plan and if there were an active shooter in the building,” Porter’s Chapel Academy principal Pam Wilbanks said. “The children already have, I am sorry to say, already had that discussion with teachers. We do have a plan in place. We just pray we never have to use it.

“Certainly after this we are going to try and do a refresher with all the teachers and make sure they are on board.”

Strickland said he met with all of his teachers Thursday and will again as they go over the plan and make sure it meets their needs as a school.

“We found a loophole,” Strickland said. “In case we have a situation where we have an armed individual or a credible threat we have a certain code we have to notify. But just suppose that in a worst case scenario a person could not get to the PA system to activate that code. How do we deal with it?”

Unlike PCA and the Vicksburg Catholic Schools, where their plans only have to cover one building, the Vicksburg Warren School District has had to create unique plans for each of its schools.

The district also had to work with both the Vicksburg Police Department and Warren County Sheriff’s Department as some schools are in the city and others are in the county.

“It is a horrible event when there are terrible people who take advantage of children and as a school district security is our number one priority,” VWSD superintendent Chad Shealy said. “We have protocols in place to protect our students. We encourage everyone who hears issues to share them. The safest place is the place that feels comfortable enough with their staff that when a student hears something or sees something, make sure it gets reported. Our heart breaks for them.”

As part of the proposed facilities plan the district is hoping to put in place, roughly $19 million will be spent on security, Shealy said.

The district also has a police force that makes rounds throughout the schools and permanent security resource officers in some buildings.

“We have routine drills every year and they have to perform them and submit those to our security officer,” Shealy said. “We had a principals meeting and we addressed it. It is something you pray you never have to deal with, but you always want to be best prepared.”

VCS also had professional development earlier this month where former Pearl High School principal Roy Balentine spoke to the staff about his experience when a shooter killed two students at Pearl in 1997.

“It is never easy,” Strickland said of talking about worst-case scenarios. “But, when you think about what the consequences are, I’d rather do this a million times and never have to go through the actual thing. Everything you can do on the front end to prevent it, you do. I would rather talk every day and remind them every day a million times not to go through it one time.”