FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — The hallways of Fort Fairfield Elementary School were silent on the morning of Sept. 26 as Fort Fairfield Police Chief Shawn Newell made his way through the school. But unlike many days, Newell was not there to pay a visit to students and staff.
Instead, Newell was just one of numerous school officials taking part in an ALICE training exercise designed to prepare students and teachers on the safest ways to protect themselves and others in the event of an active shooter situation.
ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate and is a strategic training program that emphasizes taking action to protect and save lives during an active shooter situation. Like many schools in Aroostook County, officials from SAD 20 have implemented ALICE trainings because of their differences from past lockdown procedures used in schools.
“With the old lockdown system, we were just locking doors and waiting for something bad to happen, but ALICE gives students and staff the tools to know exactly what to do instead of standing there and thinking, ‘What do I do?’” said SAD 20 Superintendent Tim Doak.
Doak said that although ALICE teaches people how to defend themselves by throwing hard objects at an intruder, the training advises folks only to utilize those techniques as a last resort. The first components that ALICE teaches individuals are how to evacuate from the closest exit or, if they cannot escape, lock and barricade their doors with heavy furniture such as a large desk or bookshelf to keep the intruder from entering.
Fort Fairfield Police Chief Shawn Newell opens a classroom door at Fort Fairfield Elementary School where students demonstrated the positions they would take and the objects they would throw at an intruder as a last resort defense technique during an active shooter situation. ALICE trainings were conducted with students and staff members at both the elementary and high schools in Fort Fairfield on Sept. 26.
(Staff Photo/Melissa Lizotte)
Wednesday morning’s training at both the SAD 20 elementary and high schools focused on three components: an enhanced lockdown, counter techniques and evacuation procedures. During the first part, officials at both schools announced over the intercom system that what they were able to do was “only a drill” and that they needed to lock and barricade their classroom doors and remain quiet.
At the elementary school, the police chief, principal Sue Parks and director of programs for exceptional children Eric McGough assigned themselves to certain hallways and made sure all doors were secure. They also checked windows and external doors. The monitors were glad to see that all teachers had locked their internal classroom doors and made them impossible to break down.
“The training went exceptionally well,” said McGough, who also is a certified ALICE instructor, after all training exercises were over. “I think it shows how seriously we’ve taken this issue as a district and how prepared we are to keep students safe.”
The “counter” portion of the training allowed students and teachers to demonstrate the positions they would take and the objects they would throw if an intruder were to somehow still make it into their classroom. McGough said he was impressed by the elementary students and teachers’ thoughtful approaches to the exercise. In addition to preparing their students to throw chairs, books, staplers and even rocks, many of the teachers positioned themselves in front of the door, ready to attack an intruder and protect their students.
Doak, who helped coordinate the high school ALICE training, noted how prepared and knowledgeable the students’ were about the safest ways to counter an intruder if necessary.
“Every one of those students and teachers did exactly what we taught them to do. In every classroom I walked into I asked the students, ‘Where would you throw the objects?’ and every one of them said, ‘At your face,’” Doak said. “That’s the protocol that ALICE teaches because you want to distort an intruder’s vision and distract them.”
Students and staff members concluded the training by evacuating both buildings as they would during a fire drill. Everyone met at a previously designated location closest to their classroom exit and teachers made sure all students were present.
Instead of holding their first training immediately after students, staff members and parents attended presentations on the ALICE method, McGough stated that SAD 20 is taking a “gradual” approach to the exercises. He attended a national ALICE training session in Portland this past summer and used the lessons he learned to first educate teachers and parents.
School officials held presentations to explain ALICE to students during the first week of school and in mid-September they held teacher-only training sessions. Two nights before Wednesday’s training exercise they held an information night for parents, which was live streamed on the district’s Facebook page. During the district’s one-week harvest break, they will also hold a training only for bus drivers, during which the drivers will learn the safest ways to transport students to a designated location in the event of an active shooter situation.
After receiving feedback from teachers and staff, Doak said, the schools will conduct further ALICE trainings until early December. He noted that the district decided against having a staff member play the role of an intruder during initial trainings so that everyone, particularly the students, could practice response techniques in a comfortable setting and gain confidence in themselves over time.
Doak expects that much later in the school year, the district will designate a staff member whom the students and teachers know well to step into the intruder role but not in an aggressive manner.
“We will also notify students and teachers in advance of who that person will be so that everyone can be on the same page,” Doak said.
He added that SAD 20 takes the emotional and social wellbeing of students seriously and that officials have found age-appropriate ways of explaining the concepts of ALICE to all grade levels. McGough was even able to read a children’s book about ALICE methods to the younger students that explained, without using inappropriate or graphic language, why methods such as locking and barricading classrooms, evacuating and countering intruders are what they must do to keep everyone safe in such a situation.
The school has also taken more basic safety precautions such as installing a camera and intercom phone for guests at the main entrance, keeping entrance doors locked from the outside at all times and making the schools part of the police department’s daily patrol route.
“This topic can definitely be scary for people to think about, but I applaud Mr. Doak, the parents, the staff and our students for stepping up and realizing the reality that we’re living in,” McGough said. “Our ultimate goal is for the schools to be places where students feel safe every day.”
