A gunman is inside a school, stalking the hallways.
What do teachers and students do?
Traditionally, they have been trained to lock down: Get to a classroom, turn out the lights, lock the door, sit quietly and wait for help to arrive.
Now, in a dramatic shift in thinking, school districts here and across the country are training staff and even students to be more proactive and resistant to an armed intruder.
Run, hide and, as a last resort, fight, they are being told.
The principals are at the heart of a safety program called ALICE, an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and escape.
The program shows teachers, staff and, in some cases, students how to protect themselves from an armed intruder by doing everything from piling furniture in front of a classroom door to, as a last-ditch effort, throwing books, backpacks or staplers at a gunman's head to distract him and keep him from shooting them.
Almost every district in the county has been trained in the program by instructors at the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13. The program's concepts are endorsed by the U.S. and Pennsylvania departments of education, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office and the Southcentral Terrorism Task Force.
And it's not just being adopted in Lancaster County.
ALICE is a national trend, with school districts in California, Iowa, Ohio, Massachusetts and Alabama learning its take-charge techniques.
Run, Hide, Fight
Districts vary in the degree that they are embracing the training.
Some are training staff and teachers, feeling they are best equipped to make difficult decisions and lead students when confronted with a crisis.
To that end, Conestoga Valley School District recently had a police officer walk through its high school, firing blanks, so district workers could hear what gunshots sound like when they are close by and when they are at the other end of the building, so they can better pinpoint a shooter's location.
Cocalico is directing teachers and staff to rapidly use an intercom system to alert others to the location of a gunman, so those who are able can get out of the building.
Other districts are even training middle and high school students, feeling they, too, should be empowered to get away from and, if all else fails, fight back against a gunman.
Hempfield School District plans to show secondary students how to remove screens from windows so they can bail out of a classroom should a gunman be in their building.
The School District of Lancaster plans to teach older students to do whatever they need to survive.
"If you can escape, escape. If you can help barricade, barricade. If the guy is coming through the door, at that point, there may be an option to just go swarm the guy," Bill Gleason, school and community safety coordinator at the city school district, told the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era.
Elizabethtown Area School District plans to begin training its secondary students this year to yell, scream, move around and throw items, so they are not an easy target if a gunman gets into their classroom.
The thought of students swarming or confronting a gunman is a sobering prospect, but security officers say parents and schools need to realize that hiding in a dark room is not the best way to survive.
"This is almost shocking when you bring this idea up," Gleason says. "It's easier to say, 'Well, we have a plan in place. Let's just sit with it.'
"The evidence is there. You stand a much better chance of being injured or killed if you just sit in a room."
"Anything," he says, "is better than nothing."
ALICE Arrives
ALICE first came to Lancaster County schools in early 2011, after officers at the Elizabethtown Police Department heard about and took the training. They then introduced it to the Elizabethtown Area School District, which is in the midst of a five-year plan to teach its employees and students about it.
"The main thing is that this gives you options," says Elizabethtown police Chief Jack Mentzer. "We have taught generations of kids that when there is danger, close the door and act like it's not in the room and just hope the danger goes away.
"That is so ridiculous."
Imagine your family is at the food court at Park City Center, he says, and a gunman runs into the middle of it, shooting.
"Are you going to tell your kids to pretend the danger isn't there? What are you going to do?" he says, answering his own question, "You're going to run for your life."
IU13 began offering classes early this year and has trained more than 250 school district employees from across the state, who then train their own staffs in ALICE.
In February, it filmed a training video for the program at Lampeter-Strasburg High School. L-S volunteer student actors demonstrated running out of a building and also using desks to barricade a classroom door.
They also showed how students could react if confronted in a hallway, by swarming a gunman, a student actor dressed in a camouflage hoodie. A group of students take him to the ground as one student uses his foot to move the gun away from him.
Not every district is adopting ALICE. Some aren't keen to even say what their security measures are.
"We don't buy into one specific program," says April Hershey, Warwick School District superintendent.
Warwick sent representatives to the training but uses practices from a variety of sources, though Hershey declined to say what those were.
"We have been advised that the details of that plan should not be available to the general public," she says.
Penn Manor School District's administrative team will be discussing ALICE this semester, but the implementation and participation levels have not yet been determined, says Superintendent Mike Leichliter.
The Tools
John Baker, the IU's safety and security manager, looks at ALICE as a toolbox, offering educators and students choices in how to respond to an armed intruder.
Running and hiding are the first options.
Manheim Township School District, which is in the early stages of adopting aspects of ALICE, is examining where to have "rally points," or predesignated areas where students can run to after they flee the school, says district spokeswoman Marcie Brody.
At other districts, those who can't get out of a school are learning "enhanced barricading." They are urged to set up furniture in a classroom so that heavier pieces, such as filing cabinets, are closer to doors and can be pushed in front of them.
Elizabethtown is teaching staff how to hold doors shut with electrical cords or belts, says Greg Kiehl, support services director and Bainbridge Elementary School principal.
The counter aspect of the program is the last resort, says Brad Testa, safety coordinator for Cocalico School District and the middle school assistant principal.
But the district wants its staff to feel they have options if they come face-to-face with a gunman, he says.
"If something happens, you have the ability and we want to empower you to act and counter if you need to," he says, adding, "I think this will become the norm. I really do."
Districts are careful to note that they don't want students or staff to put themselves unnecessarily at risk. Students can opt out of training and are not required to take any action if they are uncomfortable with the program.
"We're not teaching anyone to be a hero or seek out to take anyone down," says Randy Smith, human resources director at Hempfield and head of ALICE training there. "But there are other options that you can take instead of sitting behind a door."
Studies of past school shootings show that students and staff who took action survived more than those who went into traditional lockdown and did nothing, Baker and district representatives say.
In the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, most of the victims were shot in the library, where a teacher told students to get under desks and keep silent. Another dozen people were injured there.
In the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, 30 people died in classrooms on one floor. Of those, 28 were in classrooms where students and instructors did not actively resist or try to escape the gunman, Baker says. Other students and instructors saved lives by barricading doors or jumping out of windows.
In the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., survivors included students whose teachers barricaded doors, including the use of a filing cabinet, and kids who ran from classrooms, though some students were shot as they fled.
"With some of the recent news of attacks, it seems like there are a lot more possibilities than just lockdown and hiding," says Dan Sahd, assistant principal at Conestoga Valley High School. "It's a common-sense step."
The choices presented by ALICE are choices that any of us could have to make some day in a shopping mall or office building, Baker says.
"This is not a school skill," he says. "What we're talking about is a life skill.
"I see it as fundamental as teaching kids to look both ways before crossing the street. This is difficult but it's the world we are handing off to our kids. It's reality. We don't live in Mayberry anymore."
Sobering Reality
School district safety officers say they know that the concepts of ALICE are sobering and may be upsetting to some parents.
"I know it shocks the conscience of a lot of people," says Mentzer, the Elizabethtown police chief. "The reality is, look at how many people have died in our schools. It's time we come up with a strategy to help them have the tools they need to have the best chance of survival.
"God forbid it happens but if you don't believe it, I take you back to Oct. 2, 2006. A lot of us lost our innocence that day when five Amish girls lost their lives here and five were shot.
"It Can Happen Here"
Mark Heckaman is the director of operations and safety at Donegal School District. He's also the parent of three children, including one in elementary school. He recently took the ALICE training himself.
"I'll tell you, I was a fence-sitter when it first got rolled out," he says of the program. "As a parent, you think, 'What about this?' You worry about the things parents worry about."
His ALICE training took place in empty classrooms at the IU13 office at Burle Business Park on New Holland Avenue. He and others ran through different scenarios with a simulated intruder, a training participant who was armed with an air pistol.
"We had a regular lockdown, where you sit in a room. And you knew you were going to get shot. You just waited for it and you got shot," he says. "You were a sitting duck. There was nothing you could do."
Instructors then allowed the trainees to gradually amp up their reactions, going from barricading the door to actually countering and fighting back the intruder.
"It was the last-ditch effort. The guy was in the room and there were no other options," he says. "You decide if you are going to be passive or attack. Do you try to subdue him?"
The trainees surrounded and took down the attacker, who got off just one shot and did not hit anybody.
"Going through it," he says, "doing something, to me, personally, was better than doing nothing other than just waiting, hoping and praying you're not going to get face-to-face with someone with a gun.
"That was the kicker for me."
