ALICE School Safety Program
ALICE seems like a potentially effective approach, but I also understand the questions around the founder and the critiques about the methods. I believe these concerns and questions require thoughtful professional examinations and considerations.
Unfortunately, since reading Sergeant Davenport's (and his wife's) angry response to the BOE incident, and that he appeared to think that the best approach to move the issue forward was to distribute the BOE video to "family, colleagues and close friends", he appears to have taken a problem-escalation approach, rather than a de-escalation approach: (https://villagegreennj.com/police-and-fire/south-orange-police-officer-district-teacher-weigh-in-on-lawson-muhammad-traffic-stop/ ).
Officers who escalate problems are very concerning to me. Especially if they are officers who "manage all of the security policies and procedures of the South Orange Schools". So, I now have tremendous concerns that as as our district tries to move forward with restorative practices, that he has no idea what this is, and would tend to escalate non-life-threatening issues within our schools.
Should we use ALICE or not? I don't know. But if Sergeant Davenport had demonstrated more thoughtful and professional judgment in his previous public responses, I would have more confidence in his professional judgment now. It is just one more question on top of the other critiques.
sprout said:
It is just one more question on top of the other critiques.
I can see that, though I’d add it’s also true that how people act in public as concerned citizens doesn’t always reflect how they perform on the job as trained professionals.
The district’s ALICE proposal has brought out compelling arguments on both sides, but so far it appears that MOL interest isn’t what I thought it might be.
Dr. Thomas Shea, the new Director of Safety & Security at SOMSD, is recommending ALICE. He has a direct conflict of interest concerning ALICE. He is a doctoral advisor and one of his students is researching ALICE.
SOMSD will receive an 80% discount if we implement ALICE and participate in a study of the implementation.
Local politics aside, the philosophy behind ALICE makes the most sense. I'm not sure why one needs to pay for an expensive program. It is basic common sense - if the shooter is in another part of the building then you run, if the shooter is in your area then barricade yourself in, and if the shooter enters the room throw things at him.
I teach in Summit and we've used ALICE for several years. According to our police department, the evidence from previous school shootings shows that ALICE techniques are more effective than simply hiding. The students who survived at Virginia Tech and elsewhere were those who ran or barricaded themselves in a room. Unfortunately we've added a lot more examples since the police gave that initial presentation.
Our high school students like the ALICE tactics because it gives them a sense of control and it makes more sense than hiding. I don't know how elementary school students react.
It does help to have a good building communication system so people can announce where the shooter is. Summit has spent some serious money on improving the intercom system.
One low cost improvement for any emergency - all the buildings have the rooms labeled on the outside. If there is an emergency in room 251 they can identify the room before entering the building.
Sorry for the long post, but this is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about. When I first started teaching I did not worry about keeping my students safe from shooters . . .
The Village Green just posted a thoughtful article by a local parent group who are "volunteers for gun violence prevention". They list reasons to go with something other than ALICE, cite compelling research, possible scenarios, and conclude by recommending "Safe Havens International".
Thanks, sprout. That is indeed a thoughtful, constructive letter.
Here is a Village Green update from last week’s BOE meeting.
A slide from Thomas Shea’s presentation encapsulates one of the problems I have with the pro-ALICE arguments: a willingness to spread questionable “facts” that exploit parental fears.
First, the 2017 article was from a high school newspaper in Michigan. More power to student journalists, but blindly citing them as an authoritative source doesn’t cut it. The 196 figure can be traced to Everytown for Gun Safety, which counts each instance when a gun goes off on school property: suicides, accidental discharges, a shot fired by a police officer, etc. This is a worthwhile tally when shedding light on the dangerous prevalence of guns in our society, but to me, and I think to most people, “school shooting” means an attack. In my opinion, implying that dozens of these attacks occur in schools every year is a misleading scare tactic.
Second, the slide gets the FBI study exactly backward: In 57 percent of active shooter situations, the FBI found, police responded before they were over.
Facts like these do Shea’s efforts no credit.
It appears that during an ALICE training at an elementary school in Indiana, the trainers (their local law enforcement) decided to do a mock shooting of teachers, and did so with pellet guns. Unbelievable.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/us/indiana-active-shooter-pellets/index.html
Also, what's up with being called the the "Twin Lakes School Corporation Public Schools"?
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This may be old news, especially on other social media, but an article this week in The Village Green, which also published a letter to the school board from a South Orange police officer, called my attention to the debate over ALICE training for schoolchildren to deal with an active shooter emergency.
The officer, Sergeant Davenport, is the husband of a teacher at Seth Boyden, so in addition to his professional expertise and concern for the community’s welfare in general, he has a personal stake (I mean in a human, not a conflict-of-interest, way) in the board’s decision on whether to take part in the program.
His letter speaks for itself. One question I’d have is where the data about 15 active shooter events at ALICE-trained schools that ended without injuries came from. I’ve been unable to find any information like that online, other than some years-old articles that said no ALICE-trained schools had yet been tested in real life.
A leading national critic of ALICE appears to be Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Community Services. Here’s a link to the case he makes against the program. Two main objections are that the instruction, which calls for confronting an armed attacker with noise and other distractions as a last resort, could upset younger children and that the school training (in contrast to the continuing police training that Sergeant Davenport refers to) is too cursory to really prepare students.
I’d be interested to hear what MOL readers think.