Canton schools to move ‘beyond lockdowns’

A new school safety protocol being piloted in the Canton Public Schools and a handful of other school districts throughout Massachusetts will teach students and staff to be proactive — and possibly even use aggression — in the event that they are confronted by an armed intruder.

The new protocol, which is being spearheaded by CPD Detective/School Resource Officer Chip Yeaton, will make use of the A.L.i.C.E. training program for violent intruders — an active resistance model created by former teacher and SWAT officer Greg Crane of Burleson, Texas.

“Faculty, staff, and students need to know how and when to exercise fight or flight options,” explained Yeaton, who has trained with Crane and is passionate about the A.L.i.C.E. program. “They need to know all of the defense options that are available to them yet never talked about. They need to know how to react. This course showed how to look at your options in the eyes of a victim.”

A.L.i.C.E. is an acronym that stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. The program utilizes environmental design, technology, communication, and human action to improve one’s survival chances when faced with an immediate danger.

The current protocol, which has been in place for a number of years and is used in school systems across the country, consists of an alert and lockdown only. Students and staff have been instructed to lock their classroom doors, turn off the lights, and hide in a far corner of the room while remaining calm and quiet.

However, Yeaton said this approach only works when there is a secure room available — preferably a room with no windows and a securable, solid core door on a metal frame. Otherwise, a shooter could breach a locked door in a matter of seconds, he said.

Yeaton pointed to the massacres at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech as examples where students were shot and killed while “hiding under a desk or huddled up in a corner of a classroom, library or cafeteria.”

“Can we expect a fully armed person that enters our school buildings with the intent to do harm to our children to simply leave when they find that the classroom door is locked?” asked Yeaton in a letter to Canton faculty members. “Knowing what we know about active shooters in school buildings and other public places, the answer is no. They have already made the decision to kill when they armed themselves and entered that building.”

The key to the A.L.i.C.E. program, according to Yeaton, is to equip those in schools with a variety of survival methods or “response options” that will help to mitigate casualty rates in the event of a real-life attack.

Students will be taught, for instance, how to distract the shooter using objects in the classroom; how to control the individual using body weight; how to properly barricade a door; and how to interact with responding law enforcement officials.

Most of these strategies fall under the “Counter” component of the program and are to be used only as a last resort, such as when a shooter has breached a locked door and entered a classroom. The preferred option, Yeaton said, is to run when it is safe to do so, and training will emphasize that the “best way to survive an active shooter is to escape.”

The “Inform” component, meanwhile, advises school administrators to monitor the attacker using surveillance cameras and to provide specific, real-time information about his or her location in the school using the building’s PA system. This has the effect of confusing or frustrating the intruder, while also providing valuable information to students and staff.

The bottom line, according to Crane, is that “those under attack should make the decision that is best for them given the situation,” which represents a dramatic shift in philosophy from the current lockdown-only policy that is prevalent in America’s schools.

A recent NPR report indicated that almost 300 school systems have already made that shift and have embraced the A.L.i.C.E. model. And yet there are thousands more that have been hesitant to do so — including Crane’s hometown of Burleson, which reportedly “pulled the plug” after parents protested the program.

A.L.i.C.E. also has some vocal detractors, most notably school safety consultant Ken Trump, who has written several blog entries in which he questions both the legality and practicality of “teaching kids to fight gunmen.”

Trump further criticizes the program by noting that its “writings and teaching are heavy on the ‘warrior’ theme and light on a discussion and apparent understanding of the implications for implementation of their concept in a preK-12 educational setting.”

However, Crane argues that his program is not only research-based, but also “age appropriate, psychologically sound, and addresses the issues of special-needs citizens.”

As for the legal implications of his training program, Crane acknowledges that individuals and agencies will definitely be sued should a violent event occur on campus. However, he claims that A.L.i.C.E. strategies would be far more defensible as they provide students with a “range of options that those in danger could follow based on their situation at any given moment during an event.”

Yeaton, for his part, is completely sold on the A.L.i.C.E. program and is in the process of sharing it with other school systems through his role as president of the Massachusetts Juvenile Police Officers Association. He has already trained the entire staff at Canton High School and will soon repeat the process for the middle and elementary schools.

He also plans to offer training sessions for parents throughout the district, followed by age-appropriate training sessions for students at each of the individual schools.

It is Yeaton’s hope that active shooter drills will eventually be “no more out of the norm than fire drills.” At the same time, he stressed that “in no way are we asking or teaching our students or staff to make any attempt to subdue an armed gunman outside of a secure area.”

“However, we will provide them the knowledge that, if faced with a life or death situation, there are methods that can be applied to greatly enhance their chance of survival,” he said.

“The students themselves have to be made aware and empowered with survival options,” added Yeaton. “They have to be made aware that there is power in numbers.”

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=17058

Posted by Jay Turner on Oct 31 2012. Filed under News, Schools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.