Welcome to Our Blog!
Welcome to SAFE AND SOUND and welcome to our new blog! We are VERY excited about this new addition to our site and hope it will help us connect more directly to you and your school community and learn the questions, concerns, successes and challenges you face in improving school safety and security in your community.
After the tragic loss of our children and educators at Sandy Hook, we became passionate about school safety. Our mission became to help schools across the country know what they can do NOW to make a difference in the safety their schools. As parents, we often assume that the schools we send our children to are safe. We see almost daily how dangerous this assumption can be. Many of our nation’s schools lack the practical guidance, education and support necessary to ensure the safety of students and staff. Unless we step up and help, our children and teachers will continue to be easy targets for violence and tragedy at school.
We have realized that we are not alone in our commitment to make change. We have received hundreds and hundreds of emails from parents, custodians, police officers, delivery truck drivers, cafeteria staff and teachers all over the country wanting to make a change in their community. Many cite the same problem…. where to start? That is the reason for Safe and Sound. We have created this site for one reason, to connect parents faculty, staff and community members to the information and resources necessary to begin improving school safety NOW.
We have created toolkits, each filled with MANY tools, resources and guidance you will need to help you along the way. Please, spend some time on our site, look through our material, it is for you and it is free. We want you to use it and SHARE your feedback WITH us. We want to help you and we need to know your questions and comments on our site.
Please also consider making a donation to our organization so that we may continue our work, spread our message and continue to provide free materials to you. Thank you for visiting our site and working to improve safety and security of your school. Please send your questions or comments to info@safeandsoundschools.org!
Thanks!
Alissa Parker and Michele Gay
Founders of Safe and Sound
First, my prayers for you and your families, you are all amazing people and I am humbled by your poise, strength and the love that you are showing to each other and the world. Secondly, I thank you for taking this tragedy and your loss and applying this passion toward protecting my children and all the others. Thank you.
God is with u guys. I believe ur children are in heaven sitting at the right hand of God smiling at the good work u guys are doing here on earth. Keep the flag flying.
I support you all, I pray for you and like yourself I continue to feel pain when I hear the name Sandy Hook. But I will be strong with you and pray that though time heals it will never erase the 26 angels from our lives and memory
As a person who has delivered food to multiple schools throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire I would like to point out a security issue.
I am let in through the back cafeteria door as are other vendors. I have never been asked for a criminal background check.
With our ability to get into schools we should make sure we are not allowing the wrong people into the rear of our schools.
I will enroll as a member when site becomes available. I do have a few ideas but didn’t know where to take them. I look forward to being a member and look forward to helping in any capacity to promote this organization.
this is great,our schools have to be safe. if we cannot get gun control,we have to have our schools safe, love jimmy
I so support this!!! I am a former special education teacher, and a current college professor. I questioned the safety/security, especially the lack of emergency locks on doors. The fact that even now, I have to go outside of my classroom, and lock the doors if there is/was an emergency is absurd!!! Some of my college classrooms have 2 doors–and they’re wooden!!! Or, I’d have to leave doors pre-locked–but still have to find a way to get to them!! We’re sitting ducks–and people just focus on “gun control” and politics!!! I very much support this movement–and will be following it. If you need help from an educator–let me know. Like I said–this initiative is important for elementary, secondary AND higher education!!!!
I commend you. It sounds like a thoughtful and serious response to this tragedy. I look forward to becoming a member of this group, and trying to help focus on parent-driven school security measures that enhance safety for all of our children.
school safety has to be for the weather also.why did the school in oklahoma not have a storm shelter. this school in oklahoma was in the middle of the tornado belt ,it should of had a storm shelter. why do we wait for things to happen,before we act. all schools should be safe from guns, people ,and weather. i feel sorry for the parents of the children of the oklahoma school,if they was a shelter the children would be alive . jimmy
safe school, john potter elementary school in cranston r. i. the ceiling fell in a room. no children in the room at the time. if there had been they could have been hurt bad,or killed. they say the school is safe. i think we have a lot of work to do. jimmy
Have you read the book “Crazy” by Pete Earley? He is a former Washington Post investigative reporter who wrote the book to detail what he learned when his son developed bipolar disorder and he had such a terrible time getting him help. The book explains much of what every person in America who is concerned with the violence perpetrated by the mentally ill and the violence perpetrated on the mentally ill and just the general disaster our current policies and laws are for the mentally ill and their families should read. I do not know the answers but I do know that our society has many false beliefs about mental illness. There are not treatments for all mental illnesses. The laws are set up now so that families may have to lie to get help for their children or spouses or parents or siblings. We moved our mentally ill from hospitals to jails and prisons, requiring them to commit a crime to get help, because real help is expensive and WE DID NOT WANT TO PAY FOR IT!
Why am I writing this here. My former husband and I were born and raised in Ogden, Utah, just like the Parkers. Our family was also torn apart by mental illness, that suffered by my husband. Help was almost non-existent. We were LDS by religion and all the leaders talked about was sin and temptation, despite years of witnessing his symptoms. People have to understand what is really happening to these people if they are ever to help. The answer is not to hold a church disciplinary court; it is to hospitalize these people long enough to help them and to fund more research into treatment. It is to educate everyone about the symptoms.
We cannot place enough safeguards in place around our schools, our homes, our movie theaters, our places of work, our streets. We can learn the truth, accept its reality and move to change that reality, the same as we have done with smallpox, polio, cancer and other diseases.
A piece of erotudiin unlike any other!