“Attention staff, take out your emergency preparedness procedure book and act accordingly.”

If you are not a staff member, you are unaware of what this means — especially in the case of elementary students.

The community problem solving team, a part of the future problem solvers, recognized this issue and created “ABC’s of School Safety” to help instruct young students during a time of crisis.

The book was written by juniors Connor Earegood, Jenna Roush, Autumn Sears, Jolie Timm, and Delanie Schreiber.

Timm, a leader for the team, said that the book was written to help pupils understand what to do in a dangerous situation.

“We (the team) wanted to help prepare elementary students for emergencies,” Timm said, “like active shooters.”

The students traveled to Dowdall Elementary School on March 8 to read their book to classes.

Schreiber felt that reading to the students made the entire experience worthwhile.

“It felt amazing knowing that we helped them through possible future danger,” Schreiber said. “Even if it was just a little difference in what they would actually do in that unsafe situation.”

Rather than repeat explanations given in the past, the book offers information at a lower level for younger pupils to understand.

The students drew pictures and wrote one or two sentences explaining what to do in each scenario.

An example of this is, “B is for Block the Door. Sometimes the bad guy will want to get in. This will help you stay safe.”

Timm said that Mrs. April Yorks, adviser of the Future Problem Solvers, came up with the idea and it was a team effort to write the book.

“(It took) a couple of months (to publish the book),” Timm said. “We wrote the first draft in late October or early November, and the first copies were made by mid-December.”

Superintendent Kevin Walworth is proud of the students for collaborating to create the book.

“The high school FPS did a wonderful job taking a very delicate and potentially scary topic and made it into a wonderful tool that elementary teachers can now use,” Walworth said. “We were so proud and appreciative of our FPS team for taking on this project and pulling together such a high quality product.”

Walworth feels the book will help elementary teachers introduce the topic to young pupils.

“(The book will) help (teachers) have discussion with their young learners and help dispel some of their fears and anxiety about a very scary subject,” Walworth said.