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Austintown schools have second active-shooter training this year
By Billy Ludt
AUSTINTOWN
Township police want to ensure the schools’ faculty members are prepared to save themselves and their students in the event of an active-shooter situation.
Teachers and staff at Austintown Local Schools participated in ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) training early Friday, taught by police department officers.
“If today’s the day you’re not going to die, then you better do something about it,” Lt. Tom Collins said to a crowd of middle-school staff.
This is the second time Austintown schools’ faculty members have undergone active-shooter training this year, and the second time they’ve had a live drill in every school, in what Collins called a progressing learning experience.
“We want to progress each year,” he said. “This is just a small step in what we’re looking for.”
The staff received a 45-minute presentation on the options a person has in an active-shooter situation.
Escape is top priority, but if a shooter is too close, the officers said the next best option is concealing or barricading themselves in a room. While it’s not what police advocate, engaging the attacker is the final option.
Patrolman Keith Smith said the typical reaction to an active-shooter is “Nobody anticipated this. Nobody saw this coming.”
The presentation was followed by a live demonstration.
Faculty members took to their classrooms and offices, while officers set up a sound system on the second floor of the middle school. The speakers played the sounds of people screaming, and Patrolman Allen Phillips walked to different halls of classrooms on each floor firing blank cartridges.
Staff positioned by surveillance camera monitors gave updates as to where Collins was through the school’s public-address system. Some faculty members closed themselves in their classrooms, while others found opportunities to exit the school.
The entire demonstration took four minutes.
A focus of the demonstration was on how audible gunfire is in the building. A majority of the faculty members were able to hear everything, from the shots to the recorded screams, but Collins said the risk is raised for the few who could not.
“That just shows you how much everything is absorbed in this building,” he said.
Part of the dangers of an active shooter is a person denying what they’re hearing.
Friday’s training was optional for faculty. Principal Benjamin Baldner said he wants to establish a day before the school year where faculty members are contractually obligated to take ALICE training.
“What we think of when it comes to first-responders, we think of firefighters, EMS and police officers,” Collins said. “In reality, it’s you guys: teachers, faculty, custodial staff.”
No students were in the schools Friday because it was a teacher in-service day.
Both police and school faculty said they want to continue with ALICE training, and possibly at a higher frequency.