The Berkeley Unified School District is forming the Facilities Safety Maintenance Oversight Committee, to devise a new plan to protect students if a shooter enters the campus.

The need for the newly formed committee was triggered by an incident in March when an armed suspect was reported running toward Berkeley High School after a robbery in downtown.

“I was told to lock my doors, turn off the lights and draw my window shades down and nothing else,” said Daniel Plonsey, Berkeley High School calculus teacher. “Even with an updated safety plan, I don’t think I would know what to do in such an unpredictable situation; how could anyone?”

The Berkeley Police Department quickly contacted administrators during the incident, mandating an emergency campus lockdown. Although the suspect was later apprehended, talk has circulated around creating better ways to protect students.

The March incident showed the need to implement new procedures that the committee will review in the final audit report.

Safety in all 20 schools in the district is BUSD’s top priority, stated Mark Coplan, district information officer.

The current programs in place include the directive to “run, hide, fight” and the ALICE training program, which stands for “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.”

These strategies are taught by trained faculty members and instruct all grade level students to run to the nearest exit and meet outside at certain predetermined locations, said Coplan.

The new methods to avoid gunfire will include running in a zig-zag line with hands outstretched, so law enforcement can recognize them as unarmed victims, Coplan stated.

The school board set aside a budget of $50,000 to hire security consultants and audit its current safety policies, in which it spent $30,000 so far. Edu-Safe Associates were hired for the audit in January.

“The reason we decided to bring in consultants was that we thought it would be less effective to come up with just a local solution,” Coplan said. “We will come up with better solutions this way.”

Coplan stated the audit was not made to remodel the current safety plan but rather to explore multiple options.

Hiring consultants to audit safety policies is also the school district’s way to further expand the dialogue of school safety in the community.

Only seventh through twelfth grade students are trained to use the ”fight” option as a last resort, to protect their life.

The deadline to application was Nov. 22, following the school board meeting, said Deborah Turner, secretary to the superintendent.