Where Did ALICE Training Go?
Sadly, schools all around the world deal with deadly shootings and the ALICE procedure could help save lives. So why has it been two years since Stevens has had ALICE training? ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate, is a yearly training to teach students what to do if there is an intruder in the school.
Stevens High School has felt nothing but “normal” the past two years; COVID has made school hard for everyone but setting up events and assemblies has been especially hard. Gathering all the students in the gym for an assembly is simply not an option because of the risk of a COVID outbreak. Now that our lives are finally getting back to normal, administration feels comfortable returning to ALICE training, but not assemblies.
Stevens Assistant Principal, Mr. Rachetto claims that when we return to ALICE training, the first one will be “more of a teachable moment, where we’re going to review the main concepts for ALICE. We are going to talk about why ALICE is important…review the main concepts for ALICE…talk about why ALICE is important.” The school wants to take their time in teaching this important subject to the students, especially because we have not had it in the past two years.
One concern is that freshmen and sophomores would not know what to do in this school if there was an intruder. Mr. Rachetto said he has had conversations with middle school principals and “they’ve done adequate training for their 6th, 7th, and 8th grade years.” Meaning they have received sufficient training, for middle school, but not for high school.
The major difference is high school students drive themselves. So students who drive need to know that going out to their vehicles is not a safe option. “Your vehicle is not a good spot, because if we have 1,800 teenagers at Stevens all going to their car what’s going to happen when emergency vehicles are trying to come to the school,” said Rachetto. Students who only learned about ALICE training in middle school may not be aware about theses types of issues.
It is not just administration that is worried about safety at the schools. While upperclassmen have gone through ALICE training, they know that underclassmen have not – some even have siblings included in that group. Senior Tanner Lunders is one of those students and he thinks, “One of the bigger aspects is there’s larger halls, more rooms and new surroundings.”
Although ALICE training will make a comeback next Wednesday, the 27th of October, it will be different than in the past. Instead of having everyone reenacting a mock intruder, it will be a PowerPoint and discussion of what to do in that situation in a classroom. Though the process will not be the same, students will be learning how to protect themselves if needed.
