ALICE drill goes like clockwork at Perry Elementary Wednesday

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In fewer than five minutes Wednesday morning, the 750 students in the Perry Elementary School, led by their teachers, evacuated the schoolhouse in the first building-wide ALICE drill.

ALICE is the school district’s method for responding to an intruder, such as an active shooter, on the campus. The acronym ALICE stand for alert, lock down, inform, counter and evacuate, and students learn to take these steps in the event of an emergency intruder.

“Everybody got to their designated rallying point in under five minutes,” said Ned Menke, Perry Elementary School co-principal, “so I’d call it a success. You couldn’t have asked for a better day for it.”

Perry Elementary Co-Principal Joel Martin was also pleased with how smoothly the drill was accomplished. He said single classes had previously practiced evacuation, but Wednesday’s exercise was the first-ever school-wide ALICE drill.

“Staff training for ALICE started two years ago,” Martin said, “and then we started with the kids by grades last year, usually two or three classrooms at a time.”

Representatives from Perry’s high school, middle school and elementary school attended ALICE training in Van Meter last January, and in February Perry High School Assistant Principal Gary Czerniakowski reported on the training to the Perry Community School District Board of Education.

“We discovered that an ‘active shooter’ situation lasts, on average, from seven to eight minutes,” Czerniakowski told the board, “but the earliest arrival time for police can be up to five or six minutes after the shooting may have started, and that’s is someone remembers to call 911.”

Menke said the goal at the elementary school is to make the ALICE drill an annual or semi-annual exercise, right along with the school’s fire drills and tornado drills.

“We never had anything like this at my last school,” said Perry Elementary School Speech and Language Pathologist Audrey walker, “but I think it’s a great idea.”

The elementary school teachers led their students at a fast walk to one of the three rallying points: the McCreary Community Building, the Wiese Park gazebo and the Carris Family Funeral Home.

Once Martin received a simulated 911 text message from each class, he and School Resource Officer Pat Jans and Perry Elementary School Maintenance Technician David Lloyd made a sweep of the building to verify its vacancy.

“Even moving at 25 percent of full speed, which is what we planned, all the kids were out in five minutes,” Martin said.

Along with Jans, Perry Police Chief Eric Vaughn, Sgt. Jim Archer and Det. Jerome Hill also participated in the exercise, and the Perry Volunteer Fire Department and Perry First Responders were standing by to add to the event’s realism.

Similar drills are planned for the Perry High School and Perry Middle School.

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