Thanks to a donation valued at $17,000 from The Home Depot Foundation, East Haven Public Schools (EHPS) will soon have “Go-Buckets” in all instructional spaces throughout the district.

The buckets, part of a strategy adopted by the school district in 2019, will contain a variety of materials that “can be used in the classroom or travel with the class during an emergency evacuation,” according to a press release distributed by EHPS.

More than 400 “Go-Buckets” will be assembled by volunteers from the East Haven Police Department (EHPD), East Haven Fire Department (EHFD), EHPs, and Team Depot, Home Depot’s associate volunteer force, on Tuesday, Aug. 9. The buckets will then be placed in instructional spaces throughout all of the town’s public schools.

EHPS began training in November 2019 to adopt a new strategy, called ALICE, for lockdown procedures in collaboration with EHPD and EHFD. ALICE is an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. According to its mission statement, ALICE Training aims to train as many people as possible to have the “knowledge and skills to survive when shots are fired.”

Members of EHPD and EHFD, in addition to EHPS staff, have become certified ALICE instructors since 2019. Earlier this year in May, all EHPS faculty and staff were trained in school preparation with the intent of being able to share their training with students when the school year begins in August.

Students in East Haven go back to school on Tuesday, Aug. 30.