Sartell – St. Stephen Schools Implementing New Security Strategy

SARTELL -- ALICE is no longer just in wonderland, she's moved into the Sartell-St. Stephen School District. ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.

It's a new strategy for Sartell-St. Stephen schools in responding to intruders and other emergencies in their buildings.

Krista Durrwachter is the Human Resources Director for the Sartell-St. Stephen School District. She says, ALICE gets rid of the old code-words used in prior district protocol.

"We get away from all of those code-words if we would have a situation in our building, like a medical or an intruder. We're really talking to our staff and students in plain language [in the new system]."

She says this new system involved much more student interaction.

"We're talking through scenarios based on where someone may be, and what are your options in that situation. So our safety drills now include talking to our students and talking through different options they'd have during different scenarios."

She says they partnered with the Sartell Police Department during the first week of school this year to ensure everyone was trained.

"We actually partnered with the Sartell Police Department to do our staff live training. We did that during our back to school week so everyone across the district got trained [in ALICE]."

Prior to training their entire staff on the ALICE program, the district certified their principals and assistant principals as ALICE trainers.

Sartell-St. Stephen will still have their standard five safety drills a year as required by the state. ALICE has been implemented or trained on by over 1,000,000 people across the United States.

That number includes over 4,000 schools and 3,500 police and law enforcement organizations.