South Montgomery Schools- Crawfordsville, IN

The ALICE student training can be summed up by something Griffith and the students all agree upon: It’s better to be safe than sorry. “If they’re not safe,” Griffith said, “they’re not going to learn. And our whole purpose is to educate these children, and if we aren’t able to do that in a safe environment, then we’ve failed them.” South Montgomery schools decided to implement an active shooter training program in January called ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. Corporation staff, including kitchen and janitorial staff, have already gone through training, which was also led by Griffith. Drills will be conducted throughout the year, but on Monday, Griffith wanted to start the student training with an open and honest conversation.  “It’s gone very well,” she said. “They ask a lot of questions. What I really wanted out of the student training, more so than anything, was just to be personal with them. I didn’t want it to be some formal type of training. I just wanted to have more of a discussion about it and gage where I need to go with the topic based off of their questions and the things that they know.”The ALICE program prepares teachers and students for when a good hiding spot is not good enough. It’s in times like this, Griffith told the students, that all bets are off. When they feel their lives are in danger, Griffith gave the students permission to do whatever they feel is necessary to stay safe. With her help, students came up with ideas as to what that might look like: an entire classroom creating chaos by running in several directions, yelling and “throwing any and every thing” at the intruder. “It’s our responsibility to keep our kids safe,” Griffith said, “and violent intruders, unfortunately, are present in this world. Therefore, we have a duty to make sure we’reThe goal of the ALICE program is to do whatever it takes to get everyone in the school building out of harm’s way, with the result hopefully being a complete building evacuation. Once outside, each South Montgomery school has been given a “rally point,” or a meeting spot, where buses will be waiting to take everyone to another location. prepared for it.” Read more[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]