Tyler County Board of Education- Middlebourne, WV

A school’s response to a dangerous gunman and sex education took center stage Oct. 19 at the Tyler County Board of Education meeting. Sergeant Shannon Huffman and Mitch Corley, prevention resource officer for the schools, both of the Tyler County Sheriff’s Department, made a presentation regarding an active shooter response. The deputies took a class that taught them the essentials of ALICE , which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. They shared this knowledge with teachers and staff, but seek to teach more as the school year progresses. “Something may happen or it may never happen, but we can’t live in denial,” Huffman said. Huffman used a common sense analogy to illustrate his point about why it is important to prepare students. “It’s no longer ‘if’ but when,” Huffman said. “When it happens here, are we prepared for it? We teach kids about fire alarms, but we do not teach kids about how to respond to an active threat.” Huffman said if the board grants its approval for ALICE training, students would be taught age appropriate lessons and not handle firearms. He said as with teachers and staff, students need to learn the essentials about “how to survive”. “I hope that we never have anything like that happen. I pray we never have anything like that happen, but it is really better to prepared,” said Board member P.J. Wells. Read more