Friday, January 28, 2022
Dear Parent/ Guardian,
The Metropolitan School District of Martinsville is committed to providing the safest possible environment for all students and staff by taking proactive steps in securing our schools. We want to ensure our students have a safe place to learn, work and grow. To maintain our safety standards and adapt to the societal threat of an intruder inside our school, the MSD of Martinsville has partnered with the ALICE Training Institute.
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 county, 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, Count 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.
The ALICE Training Institute’s comprehensive roll-out procedure has brought our district a sense of empowerment. At this point, the MSD of Martinsville staff has been trained, and the district hosted parents and community for an ALICE Training session in December 2021. Using the provided strategies in age and ability-appropriate ways, Martinsville students will be trained in their schools beginning February 2022.
Sincerely,
Dr. William E. Roberson
Interim Superintendent
MSD of Martinsville
