The Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS K12) released its tiered security recommendations for K-12 schools at ISC West last week. On hand to support the announcement was Michele Gay, founder of Safe and Sound, a nonprofit that works to create safer schools through education, training and innovation. Gay is a former public school teacher who lost her daughter, Josephine Grace, in the Sandy Hook tragedy that claimed the lives of 20 students and six adults. To honor Josephine and the lives of all who were lost, Gay joined forces with Alissa Parker, who lost her daughter Emilie at Sandy Hook. Together they founded Safe and Sound: A Sandy Hook Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for safe schools through education, training and innovation. Safe and Sound is a partner of PASS K12.
During the press conference for the PASS announcement, Gay spoke about her path to advocacy. “Like families all over the country, we had to send our surviving children and loved ones back to school to work and learn following the tragedy. We just couldn’t do so in good conscience without knowing that things would be different this time,” she said.
Gay and Parker began to examine school-based tragedies of the past. They looked for patterns and evaluated what worked and what didn’t when it came to school safety. It seemed that every tragic event was met with outrage and impassioned demands for change, but overtime, as the memory of the event faded so too did the conversations. They sought a way to create real and permanent change and found an encouraging example in fire safety efforts.
“No one’s died in a fire in a school in over 56 years. As we researched, we realized the simple root of this decades long campaign’s success: education, training and innovation,” Gay said.
Safe and Sound modeled its approach similarly. Its goal was to simplify school safety and to make its tenants accessible to everyone including busy and overwhelmed parents, teachers and community members. With her background as an educator and a curriculum writer, Gay began to put together safety toolkits with the help of industry experts and other organizations across the country. Safe and Sound now offers three free safety toolkits to schools geared towards K-12 stakeholders.
“Our mission to create safer schools nationwide through a campaign of empowerment through education, training and innovation,” Gay said. “We are very proud to join forces with PASS to develop and promote nationwide standards for school security and provide unbiased education for school communities across the nation.”
To find out more about PASS and its standard for safer schools, attend the webinar: Inside PASS Electronic Equipment Guidelines for Safer Schools. The webinar is hosted by K-12 TechDecisions’ sister publication, Commercial Integrator and will take place on April 29th at 2PM ET.
