Lawsuit Financial Safety Report

How Safe is Your Child’s School?

By: Jennifer Geiringer, Chief Marketing Officer

The 2-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was yesterday, December 14th.  Twenty children and six adults should be two years older; instead they are frozen in time.  The horrific tragedy has prompted heated debate and conversation regarding gun laws and safety issues in schools across our country.  Many affected parents have turned their grief into a mission to assure that no parent has to experience a similar loss. 

Consider for a moment what these parents continue to endure.  We heard about the shootings, but we didn’t see the true horror, like Sandy Hook parents did.  We didn’t see 5-year-old Noah Pozner in a casket, left with no jaw or left hand - blow off in his last moments of life from a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle.  We didn’t see the terror and fear on the faces of so many children as they watched their friends and teachers get massacred.  Many of the parents freely admit that they were not activists before their children were senselessly killed at school; they urge people not to wait for tragedy to strike to become one themselves. 

Sandy Hook mom, Nicole Hockley lost her son Dylan that day.  She recently wrote an open letter to “the mom she used to be”.

“These are not random acts. You can’t ever say “this will never happen to me”.  It can happen to anyone, at any point, at any place.  You have to care enough and be insightful enough to act before it’s too late”. 

According to CNN, as of June 2014, there have been 74 school shooting since the Newtown tragedy.  Among those, 15 were Newtown-like incidents where a minor or adult was actively shooting inside or near a school.  That is one every 5 weeks. 

There are obvious gun control issues to be discussed, but overlooked vulnerabilities in our schools are of equal importance in debates and discussions. Many of us may not know the current level of security at our children’s school.  For some schools it may be simple “surface security”, a buzzer, a camera at the door, and/or a security guard.  Would you be surprised to know that Newtown had a locked door with a buzzer and camera, too?  These security measures did not stop Adam Lanza - he shot right through them.  Here are some questions to ask your child’s school officials about security measures:

1.      Is there a Security & Vulnerability Assessment Team composed of a security professional, a district police officer and firefighter, 2-3 volunteer parents, a school official and groundskeeper? 

This team walks the school, inside and out, at least twice a year to identify areas of vulnerability, plot safety plans and routes for lockdowns and evacuations and perform classroom visits for individual drills. It also closely monitors school drills and security measures already in place.  The team actively identifies areas of weakness that could result in a variety of detrimental consequences for the school and the community- this includes aspects of the structure, procedures, equipment, systems, grounds, surroundings, etc.  For example, a playground behind the school is safer than one accessible from the parking lot. 

2.      Does the school perform a risk analysis on all areas of vulnerability to determine how vulnerable our kids would be to specific threats, what specific consequences they could face in the event of crisis and how severe would these consequences be?

3.      Does the school make necessary changes for security purposes a priority?  What is our school budget for security upgrades?

4.      Are there written materials produced and/or distributed by the school that outline security measures and plans?  We demand to see them.  Knowing these procedures will help us talk to our children at home to make sure they fully understand what to do in these situations.

5.      How many security guards do you have in the building and what is the ratio of     guards to children?

Parents, teachers, and school administrators can certainly bury their heads in the sand and take an “it’s not going to happen to me” attitude.  However, if it does happen and it could have been prevented, what does the future look like?  While the frequent occurrence of these events are not the reality we want, they are the reality we live.  The longer we remain in denial, the more at risk our children become.  Listen to the parents of Newtown that plead for our support:

“Make this the time that change happens. Don't give up because it seems too hard or too difficult. Make a promise to honor the lives lost in Sandy Hook and elsewhere in America by turning this tragedy into the moment of transformation that benefits us all” ~ Nicole Hockley (son Dylan, 6)  

Who reading this would trade places with Nicole?  Honor her son’s memory and take action in your neighborhood.  Do it for the children.