Several area school districts are interested in a controversial response to shooting rampages that trains teachers and students to act quickly to save themselves rather than hide in a locked classroom and wait for police.
Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz, a vocal supporter of the approach, said more than 10 communities have contacted him since the Dec. 14 Connecticut school shootings to learn about the response training, called ALICE, an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate.
Comments
How about bullet proof desktops as shields. Say, 10 to 25 percent of students desks and all teachers desks. Could create opportunity to counter attack if needed.
I teach fifth grade. I am responsible for a room full of ten year olds.
This is the saddest thing that I have ever read, even though I understand the impulse to come up with some kind of reasonable plan. Am I really supposed to tell those little ones to throw their math books at a murderer?
If local superintendents and police chiefs want to keep us safe, they need to demand that we get those guns off the streets.
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In the aftermath of a shooting, we will always second guess whether a different approach might have saved lives. I can imagine that, after Columbine, people were thinking that high school kids might have thrown desks at the shooter. giving other kids a chance to run. But I think the assumption is that the person who attacks the shooter is giving his life for others, giving others a chance to run. Are we going to ask little kids to think about that?
Yes, I think it makes sense to think about evacuation but we'd have to be sure there were not several gunmen, as was the case at Columbine, and that they would not see the escape across a wide open parking lot.
So, let's start with guns, proceed directly to in-school services that might prevent a kid from going off the deep end, add in community based mental health for the shooters who are not school aged, and design school buildings that take defense and evacuation into consieration. But, first, the guns...
Honest to Pete, all of this makes me think that if I had school aged kids I would want to home school them.
I don't think that anyone is proposing the staff or students take to the halls in search of a shooter. However, if you are in a lockdown and the guy with the gun enters your classroom, why not empower students and staff to fight back. If there is a clear path to escape, why not take it? Both seem like much better plans than sitting huddled under your desk and getting shot.
The concept is already being promoted in business settings. Run. Hide. Fight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcSwejU2D0