Anchorage schools taking proactive approach to security, safety

Incidences of gun violence at schools in the U.S. are increasingly dominating the national spotlight, raising questions about school security and what can be done to ensure the safety of students.

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Anchorage schools are taking a proactive approach.

Tom Roth, chief operating officer of the Anchorage School District, supervises everything from buses, to student lunches, to safety. He said the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012 was a watershed event for education.

“That event really generated a significant effort to improve the physical security in all of the schools,” Roth said.

The shooting left more than 25 people dead at the Newtown, Conn. elementary school.

Improving the physical security of schools requires renovations, especially among older buildings, which Roth said were not necessarily designed with security top of mind.

“In older schools you’ll see the offices remote from the front entrance, whereas if you go into a newer school – say Clark Middle School – here in Anchorage, Clark Middle School is probably one of the newest schools that we’ve got,” Roth said. “The offices are at the front entrance; the principals are able to observe anybody walking up to and into the school, as are the administrators.”

In addition to moving the main offices, the district is also adding remote locking capabilities to the doors and installing new security camera systems.

The Sandy Hook shootings not only changed districts’ thoughts on the physical aspects of security, but on the mental and emotional aspects as well.

So, at the beginning of this school year, the Anchorage School District implemented a new response strategy, known as ALICE – it stands for: alert, lockdown, inform, confront and evacuate.

“Say if I’m in one end of the school and I discover as a teacher that there is an intruder on the far end of the school that I’m significantly away from, then one of the things I can do, I can evacuate, potentially, the building with my students to get them away from the risk,” Roth said.

That’s a change from the old strategy of just staying put and locking classrooms down.

And Roth said the new system has received a lot of positive feedback from teachers.

“I think that they feel more secure because they feel more trained and ready to react in an appropriate way,” Roth said.

As of mid-November, Roth said all of the district’s school staff finished ALICE training.

And now, schools will hold regularly-scheduled ALICE drills, where students will react to instructions from teachers, that could range from locking down a classroom, to evacuating out a side door.

Roth believes the combination of physical and mental preparation serves as a deterrent.