By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
While Bowling Green City School students get off a day early for their holiday break, their teachers will be learning how to handle school intruders.
The Board of Education voted on Wednesday to start winter break for students on Dec. 21 – a day earlier than originally planned. But the entire school district staff of more than 400 people will have to report to the Performing Arts Center at 8 a.m. on Dec. 21.
So as students are snug in their beds dreaming of Santa and his elves, the staff will be practicing for active shooters.
The training, led by Bowling Green Police Division, will shift at 10:30 a.m. from the PAC to simulated attacks. All the staff will go to the high school, where the high school teachers will be stationed in their classrooms and the rest of the staff will be throughout the building.
“We want to put our staff in a situation where they have to practice,” Superintendent Francis Scruci said. “That really brings it home.”
The attack scenario, which is still being designed, will not be revealed to staff ahead of the simulation, Scruci said.
The school district has done training before, but there are new staff members and there have been changes in the training, Scruci said.
“We’ve done a lot of things physically to add safety to the buildings,” he said. The district has added “boots” to all the classroom and office doors, cameras have been installed, plus ballistic shields and 3-M film have been added to windows.
Those changes were all made to keep intruders out of the buildings, out of the classrooms, and to allow law enforcement to better see the situation.
But the training of personnel is also important, Scruci said.
“Regardless of what you have done physically, your staff has to be trained,” he said. “And hopefully, they never have to use it.”
The staff will be trained in the ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) program, designed to enable people to better prepare and plan for an aggressive intruder or active shooter.
The ALICE Training option is an alternative used by many schools and workplaces – rather than the traditional “lockdown only” approach. The theory is that individuals under threat should be trained to react to defend themselves rather than be passive during an attack. ALICE is promoted as increasing children’s and employees’ chances of survival by giving them a new set of skills to use during a violent intruder event.
