RIVER FALLS – District Safety Coordinator Zac Campbell and School Safety Administrative Liaison Kate Skappel discussed safety drill evaluations at each of the seven schools, focusing on areas for improvement and how each age bracket is informed on the topic at the Nov. 17 River Falls School Board meeting.

The district has held 16 ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate) drills total throughout the buildings to learn to navigate those scenarios. Each high school staffer was trained during in-service to handle ALICE drills back in August by the school resource officer.

Campbell said two days before the drill, students do a mental rehearsal day, and then they go through the full drill.

“When you say ALICE, every student from kindergarten to high school should know what ALICE means,” Campbell said.

During the full drill, students navigate a scenario with a simulated intruder, with classes blocking and barricading their doors to prevent entry.

After the drill, a staff meeting is held to hear and correct areas for improvement. There are some differences between the high school and elementary school levels, including elementary students going through an activity book to learn about situations rather than a mental rehearsal day.

“As an administrative team, K-12 really, we’ve been talking about the lack of doors throughout the school day,” Skappel said of open classroom doors not being locked even when doors are open. “[There is needed review for] what our practices are around keeping doors locked and pulling them shut in an event where we might need to.”

Keeping the door locked, even when swung open during class, cuts one step out in the case of a lockdown, allowing the locked doors to simply be shut in case of emergency.

The front half of the meeting was dominated by three Wildly Important Goal presentations. Meyer Middle School’s goal was for 100% of students to be proficient on 90% of assessed standards from unit assessments by May 2027. River Falls High School is targeting all students achieving and sustaining mastery of reading comprehension or showing 10% growth each year by 2027. Lastly, Renaissance Charter Academy set goals of 80% of students increasing their Scaled Score in reading and math by term two, less than 15 student technology violations per term, 100% of students caught violating anti-vaping rules taking an educational course, growing the student count by 10% during the school year and increasing collaboration/community events.

The board also approved the girls hockey co-op contract with Baldwin-Woodville and St. Croix Central for at least two more years of the Fusion team.