Sep. 3—Anchorage schools are implementing new safety procedures this year. The district introduced new terminology and protocols for emergencies, and some students on Thursday will begin walking through metal detectors as they enter school buildings.
Officials with the district say neither measure will significantly disrupt daily student life, but should make them safer at school.
Safety Response Protocols from the “I love u guys” foundation are now posted at the front of classrooms districtwide. Principals and some district staff were trained on the new protocols during the summer. They are meant to specifically identify and name threats around campus, to provide clarity for students and staff during potentially chaotic situations. The materials are used at over 50,000 schools and organizations nationwide, according to the foundation’s website, and Anchorage follows other Alaska schools in Craig, Cordova and on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta who have already adopted them.
The new protocols include five designations for how schools should respond to safety threats — as moderate as wildlife wandering through the playground or as severe as an intruder in the building.
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Part of the impetus for the district to update standard safety terminology is to eliminate confusion caused by defining several different scenarios as “lockdowns.” ASD Emergency Operations Senior Director Jared Woody said the new protocols simplify and standardize that language.
“‘Lockdown’ didn’t mean what ‘lockdown’ typically means to folks. We were using the term differently,” said Woody. “We’re removing any confusion where these terms should be fairly obvious to anybody.”
The new categories for threats are:
—Hold: If students need to stay in classrooms but are not actively in danger — like a bear or moose wandering through campus — administrators would issue a “hold” notice to keep students inside.
—Evacuate: Staff would tell students to evacuate during a fire, gas leak or if the building suffered structural damage.
—Shelter: Staff would issue a “shelter” notice in the event of a blizzard or other hazardous weather.
—Secure: A “secure” notice would be issued when an active threat was identified outside the school building, including police activity nearby that’s unrelated to the school.
—Lockdown: Only if a threat was inside the school building would administrators issue a “lockdown” notice to follow ALICE protocols for responding to an active shooter. The district implemented ALICE protocols — ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate — in 2016.
Parents are not allowed on site during hold, secure or lockdown notices.
The “I love u guys” foundation was started in 2006 by Ellen and John-Michael Keyes after their daughter Emily died in a school shooting. The foundation provides the materials for free, and includes a platform to help reunite parents with their children if a school shooting were to occur.
A 2023 report by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions showed for the third consecutive year, firearms were the leading cause of death among American children ages 1-17. According to the district, firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in Alaska. There have been eight school shootings with injuries or deaths in the United States so far in 2025, according to ongoing reporting by Education Week.
Early this year, the Anchorage Assembly considered a pair of ordinances to make parents of students who bring a gun to school legally liable, but neither measure passed. Alaska’s only school shooting was in Bethel in 1997.
Metal detectors
The second measure meant to improve school security this year are metal detectors that will be randomly deployed at primarily middle and high schools.
The detectors aren’t just designed to catch weapons — Woody is hopeful that they will deter students from knowingly bringing weapons to school in the first place.
During seven test-run days last spring, they detected four folding knives, a stun gun, brass knuckles and several canisters of pepper spray. Woody said most of the students self-reported those items to screeners.
“The primary focus is on deterrence because we don’t want a weapon being brought on campus in the first place,” Woody said.
The district suspended 62 students for weapon incidents last year. Of those, six students were suspended for bringing a gun to school. Woody said that’s about double what Anchorage schools dealt with prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Weapons were finding their way into schools. We see it because we were finding some of them. What we don’t know is how many were in our schools at any given time, and there was no proactive stance to locate and remove them. This is kind of the first step in adopting a more proactive approach to eliminating weapons from being in our schools,” Woody said.
Woody estimates the district doesn’t have many guns in schools, but is concerned about any potential threat and wants to collect more accurate data.
On days where students have to walk through the detectors, it shouldn’t cause them to be late for class, Woody said. Every student at the district’s largest school — West Anchorage High School, which has over 1,700 students — can file through the metal detectors in about 12 minutes, he said.
“The use of metal detectors is one of several tools the district employs to deter weapons on campus and promote a culture of safety,” the ASD website states. “Staff will provide clear instructions during the process to ensure it is efficient, respectful, and minimally disruptive to the school day.”
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Students can keep keys, cellphones and earbuds on their person as they walk through the metal detectors. Bags and backpacks will be visually inspected by Office of Emergency Management staff, who are in charge of the screening process. Police working as School Resource Officers and private security staff will help out by organizing lines and providing secondary screenings with handheld wands, but Woody said law enforcement’s main duty is to handle any dangerous objects.
Adults will also be screened as they enter school buildings for some sporting events, concerts or graduation ceremonies, and the district says parents should allow extra time for screenings and bag checks.
School Board President Carl Jacobs said the measures are intended to increase safety without disrupting student routines.
“We can’t compromise on being reasonable and proactive in providing safe learning environments for every single ASD student,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said the district administration’s plan is a cost-effective response to community concerns.
The five sets of metal detector towers cost about $19,000 per pair. The district only paid for three of the five sets, and grants paid for the other two as well as the hand wands for secondary screening, according to Woody.
A separate effort to equip each Anchorage school building with a secure vestibule entryway is nearly complete. The second set of locking doors at the entrance to every school requires office staff to physically buzz in any potential visitor, preventing an intruder from entering the building without permission. The district has included the cost of several vestibules on bond propositions before Anchorage voters in each of the last three years after a 2022 bond failed. The district has completed 50 of 58 planned vestibule installations.