Portage county schools adopt ALICE procedure for safety

Schools in Portage County have all adopted the ALICE procedure to ensure student safety and better prepare teachers and students in the event of a school shooting. Chardon Local Schools dealt with a school shooter situation before a procedure like ALICE was in place. Reporters Emily Moran and Jenny Harvey examined the issue of school safety in Portage County as well as what happened in the Chardon school shootings.  In her video, Harvey looks at what was done at Chardon High School before anything like ALICE was in place, and also interviews a survivor of the Chardon school shootings. In her story, Moran looks at one of the school districts in Portage County, Aurora City Schools, and how it has implemented ALICE. She also examines teacher training and the overall shift in safety procedures in Aurora City Schools.

ALICE proves to be best option for Aurora City Schools

by Emily Moran

Aurora, OH- In light of recent school shootings and furthering student safety, ALICE, the active shooter response procedure adopted by many schools around the country is now practiced in every school in Portage County. ALICE which stands for “Alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate,” has been implemented in place of the more traditional lockdown procedure. ALICE was first implemented in 2000 after the Columbine shootings in 1999 and is used to address the active shooter.

[rpavideo width = “400” float = “right” caption=”In this video, Jenny Harvey reports on a student’s life after a tragic school shooting.”]RPA_03_HARVEY_SAFETY[/rpavideo]

Filling the gap

Lt. Joe Hendry of the Kent State Police Department, said over fifty percent of schools in Ohio are currently using ALICE as their primary safety procedure. Lt. Hendry trains teachers and students to use ALICE and has trained over 30,000 people in the past four and half years. He said the traditional lockdown safety procedure is no longer used as a primary response in schools.

“Under lockdown the primary response in almost all of the country was sit there and wait for law enforcement to come,” Lt. Hendry said.

[pullquote float = “right”]ALICE’s goal initially was to fill in that gap between what’s happening when the shooting starts and when law enforcement gets there. — Lt. Joe Hendry[/pullquote]

“ALICE’s goal initially was to fill in that gap between what’s happening when the shooting starts and when law enforcement gets there,” Lt. Hendry said.

ALICE offers more options

Aurora High School Principal, Mike Roberto, said since implementing the use of ALICE in his district, he feels better about the options offered should an emergency occur. He said Aurora schools have been using ALICE for close to three years. Roberto said parents and students were not opposed to the use of ALICE and the district took measures to educate parents about ALICE before it was put into effect.

“I think the parents seem to be comfortable and we have gotten the word out to them not only through letters, but communication through the superintendent and over an “all-call” system where one phone call hits everybody,” Roberto said.

Roberto said the district also offered online videos explaining ALICE so parents could learn more about what their children were being taught. He said combining the education with the program really helped.

“I feel better about what’s going on, again, if something is going to happen, unfortunately something is going to happen but we are going to feel better prepared,” Roberto said.

ALICE teacher training

Melissa Lindley, a journalism teacher at Aurora High School was trained in ALICE and said training began before the school shooting happened in Chardon. She said the first step in training was watching videos of violent scenarios to put those watching the videos in the correct mindset.

“We spent a whole afternoon just going through scenarios,” Lindley said.

She said the first day of training lasted all day and went over the exits in the building, how to use the speaker system in an emergency, and where to evacuate students. She said the training outlined what ALICE is and what it means.

“This is preparing our students to be the safest that we can keep them under our control,” Lindley said.

Lindley said the training was a big change because originally they had been taught to keep everyone in the classroom rather than evacuate.

“I really think we try to be on the cutting edge of everything at this school. We want our students to succeed and be the best they can be, and part of that is researching what would be the safest for them. I think that’s kind of what we’ve tried to do,” Lindley said.

 

Chardon shooting victim on ALICE [rpavideo width=”350″ caption=”Chardon’s Assistant Football coach Frank Hall dragged a severely wounded Walczak into a classroom by his ankles to get him to safety. In this interview, Walczak says that although Chardon hadn’t been trained with ALICE, Hall acted as best he could. “]RPA_03_HARVEY_ALICENICK[/rpavideo]