Belle Plaine Focusing on School Safety

Several things took place today at Belle Plaine that will move our district toward a more safe and secure environment for our students and staff.  This morning, Rob Rotter, Iowa County Sheriff and Josh Humphrey, Iowa County Emergency Management Coordinator provided training on the ALICE program to administrative team members from Belle Plaine and HLV.  The main focus of the ALICE program is to enable people (teachers, students) to do whatever is necessary based on a given situation to save a life.  The components of ALICE include:

Alert- talk to people & students, address potential problems

Lockdown- situational, barricade, strap doors shut, block lines of sight

Inform- be specific with info, use room numbers, inform responders, update asap

Counter- anything done to evade

Evacuate- get out quickly, anyway you can

Today's training provided scenarios and examples from other school emergency's along with strategies and advice for our administrative teams to consider as we begin to review and revise our emergency response plans.  One of the first steps in this process will be to select rally points (gathering locations), for staff and students to relocate to in the case of an emergency.  Once some of this preliminary work is done, Sheriff Rotter and Josh Humphrey will return to train staff at each building and eventually students.  A session for parents to learn more about the ALICE may also be provided.

Also this afternoon a representative from Hawkeye Alarm in Waterloo was at the high school to assess our current security system and provide information on updates that we are wanting to complete this year.  One change that will be occurring in the very near future will be the installation of a video camera and buzzer system at the main entrance.  Once this is installed the entire building will be completely locked at all times of the school day and all visitors will be viewable by camera and will have to be granted access to enter the building by school staff.  

Each of these steps is a positive move toward making Belle Plaine schools a safe learning environment for everyone.