ALICE protocols & student safety

Dear Parent/Guardian,

We are committed to providing the safest possible environment for our students and staff by taking proactive steps in securing our schools. We want to ensure they have a safe place to learn, work and grow. To maintain our safety standards and adapt to societal threats, we are adopting ALICE proactive strategies.

Adoption of a lockdown-only response has been deemed insufficient by the Department of Education, independent researchers, and law enforcement. Society is dictating we change our thought process on safety and ALICE options-based strategies will help increase survivability. We found the ALICE strategies to be the most adopted by schools across the country, and ALICE training helps to maintain our compliance with the Federally recommended guidelines.

ALICE empowers individuals to participate in their survival using proactive options-based responses. ALICE is an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. I want to assure you that we went to great lengths to understand exactly what each option entails. We are very comfortable with all the ALICE proactive strategies to empower our students and staff to survive until help arrives. We will implement these safety strategies in age and ability in appropriate ways. 

Our staff will continue to be trained on the ALICE strategies through online classes and hands-on training with a local ALICE Certified Instructor. We are very pleased with the comprehensive roll-out procedure ALICE Training Institute has in place and believe this is the right choice for our students, staff, schools, and the community.

I am notifying you all that we will be engaging in conversations with students about ALICE strategies including evacuations.  We will be practicing evacuation procedures at the end of the month, and on at least one other occasion this school year.  This is done annually to prepare for an actual event.

Sincerely,

Adam Marsh

Dean of Students

Safety Coordinator