The Blanchester Police Department provided school safety training to students at Blanchester Middle and Blanchester Intermediate schools Wednesday. The training teaches children steps they can take to protect themselves from someone coming to the school with the intent to harm them.
The training is based upon a nationally recognized program known as “ALICE” (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate), which teaches that “lock down” alone is an inadequate response in such a situation,” according to BPD Chief Scott Reinbolt.
ALICE training provides a number of other safety techniques and recognizes that, in life or death situations, students and staff might have to use items readily available to slow or discourage an attacker’s advance until police arrive.
“I wish we did not have to provide this kind of training,” Reinbolt said, “but in today’s world I believe we would be remiss if we failed to prepare our school staff and students for such a scenario.
The police department asked the Blanchester Board of Education to adopt the ALICE program in 2013, and the police department and school administrators have provided the training to staff and students annually since then.
The training was conducted by G2G Solutions under contract with the police department. G2G is a Dayton company that specializes in school and church security. The class was taught by Mark Stusek, a retired Dayton police officer and security adviser for the company.
