NREVSD to conduct intruder drills

If you student comes home from school talking about ALICE, it isn’t in reference to the new girl in school.

ALICE stands for Alert; Lockdown; Inform; Counter and Evacuate, the standard for training and dealing with an intruder during life threating lockdown situations. State law mandates that schools conduct three unannounced ALICE training drills for students each school year. Administrators, teachers and building staffs have had their required intense training session.

NRE principal Jamie Kunz

“Much like we practice other safety drills (fire & tornado) the students at New Richmond Elementary will be practicing up to three safety drills in accordance with state law,” explained NRE principal Jamie Kunz. “These will be unannounced drills so it is important to talk with your child about ALICE.”

Ohio’s School Safety Task Force, formed by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine after the Sandy Hook tragedy, concluded that that lockdown is no longer a standalone strategy to secure in place and aligned Ohio with ALICE standards.

Task Force recommendations included all of the training protocols found in ALICE Training including barricading, evacuating and countering. It also empowers and authorizes decision making by those people under attack.

ALICE training for K-12 students will be age-appropriate and based on curriculum developed by The ALICE Training Institute (www.alicetraining.com).

“Our ALICE drills are designed so that should we ever have a situation, the intruder is not going to find a soft target in our schools,” said NREVSD Supt. Adam Bird.

Some of the conclusions and recommendations of Ohio’s School Safety Task Force:

“Lockdown is not a stand-alone defense strategy.” [Page 50] “When securing in place, this procedure should involve barricading the door and readying a plan of evacuation or counter tactics should the need arise.” [Page 50] “Do not place students in one location within the room.  In the event that entry is gained by a shooter or intruder, students should consider exiting by running past the shooter/intruder.” [Page 59] “Staff and students may utilize methods to distract the shooter/intruder’s ability to accurately shoot or cause harm, such as loud noises or aiming and throwing objects at the shooter/intruder’s face or person. [Page 50] “If students and school personnel are outside of the school at the time of a LOCKDOWN, teachers should move students to the designated off-site location.” [Page 51] “If an intruder enter and begins shooting, any and all actions to stop the shooter are justified.  This includes moving about the room to lessen accuracy, throwing items (books, computers, phones, book bags) to create confusion, exiting out windows, and confronting (assault, subdue, choke) to stop the intruder.  Tell students to get out any way possible and move to another location” [Page 59]

Read the full School Safety report at the following link:

http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Files/Publications/Publications-for-Schools/School-Safety-Task-Force-Report