Proactively, our neighboring town to the southwest (Needham) has called in ALICE. Check it out on Google. It stands for “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate” and offers training to prepare individuals to “handle the threat of an Active Shooter.” I often read the Needham Tab when eating at Mandarin Cuisine on Needham St. and when I read about this program, soon to be instituted in Needham schools, I wanted to crawl under the table in memory of my under-the-desk elementary school days. One of the suggestions that their kids will be given is to distract the Active Shooter by throwing things at him/her! He has an Uzi—the kid has a crayon—REALLY?!
While we all calculate that it is most unlikely that our school children will be confronted by malevolence, we know that we bear some responsibility, at least for fooling ourselves into thinking that we are protecting them.
Personally, I hope the Newton Schools will reach deeper into their basket of safety choices and consider training school staff to do more than “ALICE”, since the time that it takes for police to arrive, while admirable, is not fast enough to minimize the first moments of carnage that we have all seen replayed on CNN. So what do you think? Should we allow ALICE to move in here? Continue with “Lockdowns”? Do nothing?
Stupid acronym
Dear Yuppie Scum: To quote another V14er, Chris Steel, who was quoting someone else, “Not my circus, not my monkeys”. I didn’t coin the surreal acronym. But that still leaves the fundamental question unanswered. If you have kids (or even if you don’t) what would be a reasonable direction for Newton’s Schools to take in this wicked world in which we live? Are you an ostrich, a prepper, or somewhere in between?
I can’t believe there is so little interest so far in answering this question. It may be baffling and have given our bloggers pause to consider their responses, but whether you are a 2nd Amendment supporter of personal gun rights or a devotee of the socially protective Nanny State, what action, if any, would you suggest Newton takes to plan for the unthinkable? I have never seen Village 14ers ignore a real question! Even if we are not experts, we always have opinions!
I was thinking also about my place of business. My kids have practiced this at school, but I have no idea what to do if there is an active shooter in my building, or even worse my office (I work in a cube so therefore I have no door).
@Newton Mom: From your response, I am wondering if ALICE is already living in Newton? (My youngest kid graduated from Newton schools a long time ago!)
I watched a news program recently that indicated that a New Hampshire Police Chief was meeting with individual businesses in his city to tailor response plans for their employees. Maybe our new Police Chief can set up something similar here? I would also think insurers would promote such actions to minimize any liability they might have.
I think this effort is increasing fear where it’s not needed.. According to FBI statistics, there were 133 shooting incidents including 4 or more people (their measure for referring to a mass shooting) from the beginning of 2009 through July, 2015. 5% were at current or former workplaces and 4% were at schools, including elementary, middle and secondary.
4% of 133 = 5.32.
This extreme training (really! Students throwing things at a shooter) is reminiscent of hiding under a desk to be protected from a nuclear blast which was just a propaganda tactic. You are better off knowing the truth that crime has been going down over the years, not up as some would have you believe, and mass shootings are so rare as to be hardly perceptual. And mass shootings in schools are barely there at all – 5 in 9 years.
Some easy instruction is all that’s needed. Easy to reach alarms, a way to reach teachers quietly to pull shades on hall windows, locks on doors and other similar measures make sense but overreacting with counter measures such as students interacting with shooters is ridiculous. I think ALICE will instill more fear in students, teachers and parents which leads them to expecting colleges and universities to be thought of as places to be kept safe like home instead of places for intellectual stimulation.
Fear where little is needed leads to turning your safety over to others and reducing your freedoms.
Marti,
My son has been in at least two lock downs at the old Angier for bank robberies. Due to the practice, none of the kids freaked out, and everyone was calm. I don’t think you can expect kids (and there are all types of kids in classrooms) not to panic when the normal procedures aren’t followed. I think because of the annual practice drills, kids just assume it was a drill (at least the younger kids).
I feel if you don’t practice with kids, there can be panic – unintentionally.
And even though the shootings are rare, so are fires, but my office building has an annual fire drill, where the fire department shows up, and makes sure each office is vacant, if not the business is fined. So, I would gladly accept to learn where to go if there is an active shooter in the building.
Newton Mom, I think “knowing where to go” is among the reasonable things to learn. Children react differently to any kind of deviation from their norm, particularly the young and sensitive, I agree. So some of these things can be worked into their daily schedule. But talking to kids about preparing for a weather event isn’t the same as telling them they need to be prepared to fight back if a shooter starts shooting at them. A lockdown can be less disruptive if done well but I don’t think it is appropriate to tell young children exactly why they are being asked to stay where they are.
When Sandy Hook happened one town over from where my grandchildren go to school, parents who knew their kids well told each one what they thought they could handle. They were on lockdown for the rest of the day but were kept calm. They noticed police officers in their halls but were given some excuse for why they were there and the officers were smiling and kind. Questions about exactly “why” were left for parents. Not one child panicked because everyone stayed calm and continued on with their day. So now most of them still feel they are safe in their school.
According to facts, not perception, the threat to children from active shooters in school is incredibly small. Besides the widely televised blips from individual incidents, the rate of violent deaths of school-age children in school has remained steady or declined for decades.
See: this CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/school_violence_fact_sheet-a.pdf
School age kids are safer from violent crime in their school than anywhere else. Crime and violence is an issue in schools, as the CDC shows, but the incorrect perception that active shooters are a significant part of that threat masks the more common problems, like 5% of all teachers reporting being physically attacked by a student.
Sure, educate administrators, teachers, and staff about what to do if the unlikely happens. They, hopefully, can contextualize the unlikeliness of the threat balanced with the utility of being prepared. Also, for sure, any shooting in a school is unacceptable, there are way too many in the US, and we need to aggressively find ways to end them.
But school should be teaching kids about how to deal with the world based on rational thought, not emotional fear. There is real developmental and societal risk in creating the perception that danger may lurk around every corner. The low-level stress set up by such incorrect perceptions of reality is more likely a larger public health concern than the violence itself. Stressed out kids, and stressed out parents, are the true victims of this kind of terrorism: fear is more powerful and has more range than any bullet.
I can think of about a thousand more practical skills to be taught in school than how to help your teacher barricade a classroom door, or running around the school finding a way to hide from the “big bad wolf” that ALICE uses for training.
I find it ironic that ALICE-like training, which will thankfully be used in practice by almost no child, could be mandatory for every child, while sexual education, which involves important health information about an activity that almost every person will engage in sometime in their lives, can be opted out of in most school districts including Newton.
Good comment, Mike, with which I personally agree. I hope ALICE doesn’t move in. But I also hope that Newton’s school staff and teachers receive training and direction as to how to handle those rare but deadly difficult situations that the 21st Century has presented as more than mere paranoia. That’s just good planning! Another point, I hope we are building technology into our buildings to facilitate emergency communications.
Actually, there seems to be organized and well considered opposition to ALICE training:
http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/alice-training/
The more I look at the ALICE web site, the more I find it manipulative at many levels. They imply that the US Department of Education endorses their training, which I can find no reference to at DOE. They also imply that schools could be liable for not choosing to use ALICE, which doesn’t appear to be true.
Finally, it is hard to figure out if ALICE is run as a non-profit or for profit. Their materials sure look expensive to me.
Sometimes the line between good intentions and opportunism is pretty gray.