School Safety Information from Samuel Tucker Elementary School

School Safety Information from Mr. Paschal   As is our custom at the beginning of each school year, we will begin practicing the school safety drills required of all schools by the Commonwealth of Virginia. We plan to host our first fire drill by the end of the first week of school and will have a second one by the end of the month. Also this week teachers will be implementing the first ALiCE lesson (reading the book) and by the middle of next week will have practiced evacuating to their classroom's designated safe space outside of the building. Although the recent events this past weekend are a reminder of the need for preparing our students for emergency situations, our upcoming drills reflect our common practice of keeping kids safe and prepared at all times. For families new to Tucker, we hope that you can join us at 6:30 PM on Monday, August 19 for our annual ALICE Parent Presentation. Below is the letter that will be sent home with your child today.

August 5th, 2019 Dear Samuel Tucker Elementary Families, As you may know, Alexandria City Public Schools, along with community partners including the Alexandria Police Department, has begun implementing significant changes to our practiced response to physical threats within a school building. The ACPS team is developing, educating and training staff and all students, in an age-appropriate fashion, on how to respond and prepare for the unlikely occurrence of an intruder (someone trying to hurt students and staff) at school.  Please know that we are taking into account developmental appropriateness and levels of learning abilities as lessons are being developed. The new program we are adopting is called Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate, commonly referred to as ALICE. This process provides appropriate action steps for students and staff to take in order to stay safe in the event of an active shooter or active threat in the school building or on campus. The main objective of this program is to provide students and staff with OPTIONS to increase their chance of survival during an intruder emergency. The ALICE initiative is recognized across the country as an additional component to the traditional “lockdown” response. Alexandria City Public Schools administrators, teachers and staff began ALICE training in the summer of 2017. Tucker staff members have all completed both online and practical training with our instructors during the school year prior to taking the next steps with students. It is now time to educate and train our students by engaging in age-appropriate lessons and practicing age-appropriate scenarios, which will lead to a practical understanding of the safety options provided by ALICE. Over the next couple of weeks our students will participate in overview lessons on the major components of ALICE taught by their classroom teachers and members of our school ALICE Instructor Team.  At the elementary level, our primary focus for students will be on EVACUATION if there were to be an active shooter or threat inside the building. Students will learn the different exits of the building, how to safely run to our safe places, and actions they can take to keep our school safer (such as not opening exterior doors to known or unknown adults). A  Parent Information meeting will be held on Monday, August 19th from 6:30-8:00.  I hope that you can join us! Just as routine fire drills have played an important role in school safety, it is our hope that these new strategies will become engrained in a similar fashion to ensure that our students are safe at school each and every day. As always, please do not hesitate to contact me directly with any questions regarding this topic. Thank you for your ongoing support. Sincerely, Rene Paschal