Parents — We are committed to providing the safest possible environment for our students and staff by taking proactive steps in securing our schools. We want to ensure they have a safe place to learn, work and grow. To maintain our safety standards and adapt to the threat of a violent intruder inside our school, we are adopting ALICE proactive strategies.

Adoption of a lockdown-only response has been deemed insufficient by the Department of Education, independent researchers and law enforcement. Society is dictating we change our thought process on safety and ALICE options-based strategies will help increase survivability. We found the ALICE strategies to be the most adopted by schools across the country, and ALICE training helps to maintain our compliance with the Federally recommended guidelines.

ALICE empowers individuals to participate in their survival using proactive options-based responses. ALICE is an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.

I want to assure you that we went to great lengths to understand exactly what each option entails. We are very comfortable with all the ALICE proactive strategies to empower our students and staff to survive until help arrives. We will implement these safety strategies in age and ability appropriate ways.

Our staff has been fully trained on the ALICE strategies through online classes and hands-on training with our school resource officers (SROs) and other law enforcement partners. We are very pleased with the comprehensive roll-out procedure your buildings have planned and believe this is the right choice for our students, staff, schools and the community.

In the coming weeks, your student(s) will be participating in ALICE lessons and drills at their schools, led by their teachers, school administrators and SROs. Please take some time to discuss this with your child in an age appropriate manner if they have any questions.

Sincerely,

Matt Wandrie, Superintendent
Lapeer Community Schools