LEWISTON — The School Committee heard a presentation Monday evening on a new method of training teachers to respond to active shooter situations.

Bobbi Avery, chief administrative officer for the School Department, said Lewiston public schools use a “lockdown approach” in an active shooter situation, meaning teachers lock classroom doors and students “huddle in the corner.”

“In a situation like that, if a shooter walks by the classroom and sees the students huddled, they’re sitting ducks,” Avery said.

Roger Landry, sergeant with the Lewiston Police Department’s Youth and Family Unit, agreed with Avery, adding, “It’s like shooting goldfish in a bowl.”

Avery told the committee she and several Lewiston educators, administrators and school resource officers had recently been trained by the ALICE Training Institute, an active shooter training and preparedness program.

ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate, and references the five options that educators could take in the event of an active shooter.

“Right now, Lewiston public schools policy is to lock down the school and classrooms,” Avery said. “The ALICE program gives teachers options on how to respond to a shooting depending on the circumstances.”

Avery said the ALICE program recommends educators evacuate a classroom if there’s a good opportunity, or countering the shooter as a last resort.

“Our policy right now doesn’t take those options into consideration,” Avery reiterated. “We just lock down the school. However, if a teacher thinks that they can safely evacuate their students without danger, then ALICE allows them to do that. If they think creating noise or distracting the shooter will make it easier for students to evade, then they can use that option.”

Superintendent Todd Finn said he has served as a principal at two schools that used the ALICE program and said it was “well worth the time and effort.”

“We need to be proactive in training our folks so that if this day ever comes, our kids will come home,” Finn said.

Jake Langlais, principal of Lewiston High School, said training for Lewiston educators would include “being taught to barricade a room and how to evaluate what’s in a room that you could use to counter a shooter.”

No vote was taken on whether to use the ALICE program.

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