Cantons Schools to Move Beyond Lockdown

By Jay Turner
 
A new school safety protocol being piloted in the Canton Public Schools and a handful of other school districts throughout Massachusetts will teach students and staff to be proactive — and possibly even use aggression — in the event that they are confronted by an armed intruder.
The new protocol, which is being spearheaded by CPD Detective/School Resource Officer Chip Yeaton, will make use of the A.L.i.C.E. training program [www.responseoptions.com] for violent intruders — an active resistance model created by former teacher and SWAT officer Greg Crane of Burleson, Texas.

“Faculty, staff, and students need to know how and when to exercise fight or flight options,” explained Yeaton, who has trained with Crane and is passionate about the A.L.i.C.E. program [www.responseoptions.com]. “They need to know all of the defense options that are available to them yet never talked about. They need to know how to react. This course showed how to look at your options in the eyes of a victim.”
A.L.i.C.E. [www.responseoptions.com] is an acronym that stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. The program utilizes environmental design, technology, communication, and human action to improve one’s survival chances when faced with an immediate danger.

The current protocol, which has been in place for a number of years and is used in school systems across the country, consists of an alert and lockdown only. Students and staff have been instructed to lock their classroom doors, turn off the lights, and hide in a far corner of the room while remaining calm and quiet.

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