Chicago police, CPS hold active shooter drill with school year starting next week

CHICAGO - Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Police Department are preparing for the worst, with the all-important job of keeping students safe.

Chicago students will return to the classroom on Monday, and ahead of that, the CPS district, Chicago police and the fire department held an active shooter drill. 2018 was the last time a drill like this was done.

The drill was held at Julian High School in the Washington Heights neighborhood on the Far South Side. The principal, teachers and staff participated.

Research has found that having students present can be traumatizing. The goal was to see if the drill needs areas of improvement.

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There was a serious emphasis on monitoring online threats and actively monitoring school grounds.

"We are starting with an $8 million dollar investment to upgrade cameras now, and we're gonna do another investment at the end of the first semester. And then we're actually creating a multi-year plan as well," said CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

"This initiative with our partner Save Our Schools Together will allow us to proactively identify those situations which are bubbling up on social media which then allows us to conduct an intervention before it turns into a more serious incident," said Jadine Chou, CPS’ chief safety and security officer.

Safety videos will be available on the CPS website for students and parents.