From Tragedy to Advocacy: Redefining School Security After Sandy Hook

First things first, we’d like to congratulate our longtime friend and Safe and Sound speaker, Paul Timm, on the launch of The Changing Face of School Security, an Allegion Podcast. In this podcast, Paul hosts leaders and change-makers in the K-12 industry and highlights strategies and tools that can help schools navigate and address the ever-changing landscape of school safety and security.

Co-Founder and Executive Director Michele Gay recently joined Paul on his podcast to kick off the first episode and discuss:

the Safe and Sound Schools mission,
the Especially Safe program,
the importance of creating appropriate plans for school safety, and
the changing landscape of school security.

Below is the episode transcript from Allegion, but we strongly encourage everyone to tune in here or through your favorite podcast listening platform. Look out for other amazing guests this season!

Episode 1 Transcript: From Tragedy to Advocacy: Redefining School Security After Sandy Hook

Paul Timm (00:10):

Hi, my name is Paul Timm, director of Education Safety with Allegion. It’s my distinct pleasure to welcome you to the Changing Face of School Security. In this episode, we welcome Michele Gay, the founder and executive director of Safe and Sound Schools. We’ll talk about the Sandy Hook School tragedy, the new especially safe program, and upcoming school safety events. Michele, welcome. I want to give you an opportunity to say hello because many of the listeners might not know about your daughter Josephine and the Sandy Hook tragedy. So if you could give us a hello and a little bit of background, that would be great. Awesome.

Michele Gay (00:53):

I’m so glad to be here with you. By the way, I’m gonna make you sit on my podcast, too. So fair’s fair, <laugh>. It works both ways. We’ve been colleagues and friends for some time now. But I met you, Paul, shortly after I started this mission of Safe and Sound Schools, and you’ve been a great supporter of ours, a great speaker and trainer, and a great partner in this work. So our work all began after the tragedy that we suffered at Sandy Hook School on December 14th, 2012. And I think, you know, lots of people when we mentioned that they kind of remember exactly where they were at that moment in time, I’m sure you do too. And that was very much a moment in time, you know, for us, for our family, our lives certainly changed forever.

(01:42):

We lost our little girl, Josephine, the youngest of three of our beautiful girls, but in so many ways, I think in large part, just because of who we are as a family, and our faith she’s very much with us, and a part of our lives, and certainly a part of this mission that is Safe and Sound Schools. Our focus, really our legacy, for her, is supporting school communities and crisis prevention, response, and recovery. Really just trying to do better by our kids, do better by our communities, learn from the lessons that we experienced so, so tragically. But also to learn from and share the successes that we experienced, which we certainly want other communities to know about. So it’s just been a tremendous journey. It’s been a very healing process for me, for my family, and really just interacting with so many people like yourself, Paul, and good folks at Allegion that are just dedicated to doing the right thing. You know, getting the best resources and solutions and the best education and training to the folks that are in our schools every day, our teachers, our staff, our students. So it’s great to be here and to be able to dig into all this with you today.

Paul Timm (03:00):

Well, thank you very much. And I can’t help in my mind’s eye but see, especially that one photo of Joey and I do think of her quite often, and I, really all of us are wrecked from those 20 children who lost their lives and the six adults as well. But the mission of Safe and Sound Schools is as comprehensive as I know any mission to be. So if you could, give us a little rundown on that. And then once you do that, I’d like to head into one of the sort of newer areas of Safe and Sound Schools.

Michele Gay (03:36):

So, you know, I’m a teacher, I’m always gonna identify that way. I was an elementary school teacher, so there’s a ton of our work at Safe and Sound that’s admittedly very influenced by that educator perspective, and as we’ll talk about later, the mom of a child with some pretty profound special needs Josephine. So all of that has colored, I think, in a special way, the work that we do. But our mission is, as you said, comprehensive. I think when I first kind of stepped into this space and this mission, I, like many people, was looking for the thing, the quick fix, the law, the magic pill, then what’s the thing that is going to just erase these horrific tragedies from our lives. You know, I remember sitting in the parking lot the day of the tragedy, just absolutely stunned that this was happening, you know, all these years after Columbine.

(04:34):

I guess my assumption had been, well, surely we have learned better, you know, we were better prepared, we’re better educated, law enforcement’s better trained. We’re never gonna experience that again. But that was sadly not the case. And, and I think we now know, you know, we all now nationally know that very, very well. So I guess stepping back and, and then consciously stepping away from that kind of knee-jerk reaction to find a quick fix, it took a lot of discipline to do that. I’ve definitely called upon the educator in me to do that. But in doing so, we created a comprehensive framework for school safety planning and development. And that really, we call it the big six, kind of internally, just like our shorthand, it’s comprised of six key pillars or domains as we educators like to refer to them, really six key areas, so mental and behavioral health, culture, climate and community health and wellness, physical safety and security, also operations, and day-to-day management. So, emergency operations and daily operations as well as leadership, law, and policy. So those six kind of make up the foundation of any comprehensive, sustainable school safety plan, approach, program, whatever it is. We really feel that you can’t have a good solid program without attending to each of those pillars and building them out with numerous programs and experts and individuals you know, all that expertise that goes into it. So it really does take a team. That’s what it comes down to.

Paul Timm (06:15):

It takes a team and it takes a lot of time because, you know, as I focus on physical security, I sometimes find some, some bleed over into other areas, and I want to talk about one of those just right now. But it’s a lot of effort to undertake a comprehensive approach. One of those items that I wanted to talk about since we’re on the changing face of school security, is, I believe Michele, the next code-driven emergency supply, meaning schools will be required to have, it will be trauma kits, and whether you use Stop the Bleed or a bleeding control kit, or Israeli bandage or tourniquet, which I always feel strange saying because we heard that term when we were young and we were told to never use one unless it was a life and death matter. Now, you know, get the tourniquet as soon as you see any blood at all because medicine has developed and come such a long way, which is great, but I believe it’s only gonna be a matter of months, maybe years, but months before schools are required to have trauma kits.

(07:21):

And I’m happy to tell you that as I do assessments, I’m seeing them more and more, which is really great. Quite often kept by the defibrillator cabinet or someplace like that. But, instead of staying on that track, I wanna hop right back over, because as we think about great changes in school security, one of them, I believe is your introduction of the Especially Safe program. Can you talk a little bit about that, please?

Michele Gay (07:48):

Oh, happily. Yeah. Some of the things that we noticed kind of stepping into this, I say we, my co-founding partner, Alyssa, founded Safe and Sound with me. She lost her beautiful girl, Emily. And you know, she’s very much a part of this legacy, this mission as well. But I think we kept hearing people say as I was talking pretty openly about Josephine and, the lessons we learned from her experiences and from the tragedy, that Josephine was a child with a lot of special needs. And, you know, we kind of, as a family talked about all of our girls as very special, but Josephine is especially special with all of those challenges and gifts that she came to this world with. And so just realizing, gosh, we’ve made some strides sure, in school safety and security, but we really haven’t even touched the issue of how we plan for how we teach and train and prepare for the needs of a student or a staff member who has access and functional needs like Josephine.

(08:51):

What’s the plan there? Cuz it can’t just be that one-on-one that, you know, when I think back to what our plan was for Joey, it was, well, she’s got this aid and this aid will, you know, surely figure it out and adapt things on the fly. Wow, what an unfair responsibility to put on anybody’s shoulders. It took us a long time to figure out how to tackle that. It’s a very complicated issue. There are a lot of very different special needs that people present within a school community. So how do you possibly account for all of them? What we landed on, I feel really good about, you know, we landed on building a teams framework, you know, how I advocate for this multidisciplinary team-based approach. So we kinda leaned into that and we created an acronym called Teams around the planning piece.

(09:40):

And so T in teams stands for transportation and mobility, and E for emotional and behavioral health. The A is for auxiliary communication, the M is for medical needs, and the S is for security and supervision. And so what all of those are really accommodations categories. They are kind of categories that we really need to think through individual by individual. What does a given person need in terms of being safe in the middle of any type of crisis? So do they need help moving to a lockdown position or do they need help evacuating? Do they need help communicating, you know, just not just speaking, or sharing information, but receiving it and processing it, knowing what to do with it? Do we need to take special precautions for an individual who’s known to run away when things get, you know, stressful or perhaps a child whose family has some custody issues, right?

(10:37):

Those are the kinds of things that we want to be able to plan for on an individual basis for some of these, especially special students and teachers like I said, staff members as well. And then beyond that, how do we teach them in a way that’s trauma-informed, that’s developmentally appropriate that really at the end of the day is empowering for individuals and not scary for individuals? So there’s kind of two main parts to the program planning and preparation and then teaching and training. So tons to dig into for our emergency managers and our very safety and security-minded folks, but also for the parents and the educators who can support this work and support the preparation of our Especially Special students and staff.

Paul Timm (11:22):

Well, I love it and I want to tell you why I love it. First of all, for years, I saw, that if you ever brought up an emergency plan, we have to take into account those who have special needs. You always saw a nodding or glad-handing, and I was one of those people, I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it should probably be there. And then you also saw, and I’m gonna admit to this as well, sometimes people who then wanted to drive a truck, right? Through everything with no real care. And I’m gonna give an example of that. We, years ago, we were working with a school that served profoundly disabled students and we said, we’re gonna bring in local law enforcement to run an active shooter drill. And the teachers rose up and were like <laugh>, no.

(12:09):

You know, we weren’t really listening. Well, now I hate to admit these things, but it’s true. And that particular community did not have great law enforcement support, which is highly unusual, but the county did. And so the county sent the SWAT team—now imagine a SWAT team dressed in black with helmets and all of that, coming to a school with profoundly disabled students. And the teachers pretty much rose up and said, well, first of all, you know, welcome, but you’re not coming in like that. And what we’ll do here is pretend that we’re the students, so you can see what some of the typical responses would be like, especially from students who are autistic or whatever. And they did a beautiful job in their experience of demonstrating how some students might run up and want to touch the helmet and the gun and how some students would run into the corner because they couldn’t handle another sensory type experience, especially one that is that dramatic. And we, Michelle really learned at that point that we didn’t know much. And so, as you are rolling this out, and I know it’s rolled out, but as it continues to roll out, I just wanna say thank you because we’re all learning in this particular situation.

Michele Gay (13:25):

I greatly appreciate that it’s evolving, it’s making its way across the country and into classrooms everywhere. I think it goes to something you have always talked about, and that is just making sure that you’re hearing from everybody, like you said, the teachers have insights and expertise that I think for too long has been kind of discounted or overlooked maybe in the best case. And I feel like that’s something that we successfully brought into the conversation with Especially Safe.

Paul Timm (13:57):

And I know that, as you just mentioned, we are aligned in a collaborative approach, that’s for sure. And another approach, which is just really a component of the collaborative approach that we’re aligned with is the healthy and appropriate involvement of students. And so I’d love for you to talk a little bit about Safe and Sound students.

Michele Gay (14:17):

Absolutely. Kind of, you know, continuing in the same vein, another incredible resource for this work are students themselves. And I know you lean on your kids now, adults too, as you say, make you better at what you do. And that’s what our students can do too. You know, they are on the cutting edge of every change that’s coming down the pike. They know it and they have mastered it before we even realize that it is upon us as adults. So there’s that. There’s also just the fact that their eyes and ears in our school's communities and they care. You know, this is their house. The school is where they live, most of their lives. And they want to be safe. They want to feel good about coming in every day.

(15:04):

So let’s hear from them. And even more so let’s create a place where they can be leaders in this conversation. And I say create a place because it does have to be a special place. It’s not like we can take students and make them in charge of school safety, but we can, you know, educate them and we can raise them up. We can give them a very specific seat at the table. And we’ve seen schools and communities do incredible things with our Safe and Sound Students program. Think of it like, you know, we have National Honor Society, we have all kinds of kind of high flyer type organizations. Student government is another great example where a lot of our academic achievers really shine, you know, then we have sports where a lot of our, our kids who are really athletically gifted shine, but sometimes there are real leaders in and among our school communities in the form of students that don’t really have that place to be leaders.

(16:04):

And this is unique because we see a lot of students really shine as leaders here with their contributions to school safety. And they might not be your 4.0s and they might not be your all-star athletes or, you know, your musically gifted or your artistic superstars. But they are superstars in and of themselves, and they bring a lot to the conversation. So it’s been really exciting, and now the program has been evolving and, in practice, in schools and communities for years now. So we actually have, it’s crazy how fast they grow up, but, but we have some of our sort of graduates that are now emergency managers and teachers and, you know, in the field of security themselves. So it’s been amazing to see how that has influenced their own career paths as well.

Paul Timm (16:52):

I remember a number of times when I was presenting, one or more of my kids was in the audience, and I would be talking about something like social media risks and solutions. I would mention something. And my, I remember distinctly my daughter’s hand went up, she was in high school, and, and I, I said, yes, Amanda. And she said, well, that’s not right. What you just said, <laugh>, you, I am talking about Snap maps as part of, you know, Snapchat. And she was correcting me. And I, I did realize right then first of all, as I pushed down my urge to stifle, I went, wow what am I doing here? I could be letting the expert present. And I, I really like that for schools to have regular briefings on safety and security matters and occasionally call upon students to lead that briefing.

(17:47):

Why is everybody on TikTok and what are the video challenges that are drawing us to this medium? And by the way, I’m just making it up at this point, but I do know this, and Michelle, you’re way younger than me, that’s for sure. But when you get in into adulthood and trend toward middle age, what we find, in the attendees that I’m presenting to is that most of them aren’t on any of these social media outlets. And so they, they have no idea at all, and they’ve kind of looked at them all as bad. Whereas there are potential solutions, there are great mass notification helps, there’s many gains that can be gotten from education and students can help lead the way. And please, I’m not trying to just restrict them to the social media space. I remember my son would be with me and he would say, well, dad, that’s, that’s a place that during an assessment, he, he would say, that’s a place that you could easily get roof access.

(18:46):

And the facilities person would go, no. And then I would say, okay, go ahead and show ’em, Dave. And just in a, in a, in a moment be up there. And I would say, now, please come down and don’t tell your mom that you, you climbed up there. But there is a level of knowledge, there is the ability to access information quicker and more efficiently than an adult. There is the awareness of things that are brewing among the students where the gaps and vulnerabilities are really, if we’re not involving students, I believe we’re cutting off our nose despite our face. We’ve got to be able to do that. So thank you again for making that a, a key component in Safe and Sound Schools, because you have all kinds of free time and aren’t busy enough to have all kinds of summits. And it used to be that there was just one national summit on school security, but you now have branched off. Tell us a little bit about what you are doing and what’s upcoming.

Michele Gay (19:42):

Yeah, I think one of the things that I’m proud of for our organization, you know, is, is comfortable with growing and evolving and, and, and changing as we need to. And boy, we all had to do that with the pandemic period and sort of the aftermath that we’re, that we’re now in. But one of the things that we learned, just because we stumbled into it was, our national summit became virtual because it had to, and we certainly reached thousands of people that we probably would never have been able to reach with that in-person model that we had, you know, started our summits, our national summit with. So we decided we would keep that, you know, forever and ever. We, we’ve got classroom teachers, we’ve got custodians, cafeteria staff, parents, you know, even in some cases, students that are able to do us because of this virtual and kind of asynchronous on-demand capability that we, we have with that.

(20:39):

But there was still a really strong need for a very regional approach to the summits and really kind of embracing the flavor and the challenges, the cultural aspects that play into safety and security for our schools and communities as well. So we kind of, you know, shifted our, our model to where we have the national every year during school safety week in mid-October, and then we sort of have a summit season that, you know, begins in, in late July and, and takes us through mid-November, you know, hitting the southeast at this point Dallas and the Midwest as well. And, and we, you know, we continue to grow those kinds of regional summits, but it’s a great way to gather folks, get all those different disciplines all together under one tent and do the good work of, of solving for safety in our schools and communities. It’s really exciting.

Paul Timm (21:33):

It is exciting. And let’s just agree that virtual education is a major silver lining to the pandemic. We tend to look back and go, oh my, we were, we, you know, we were robbed of all of those months and, and, and years. And by the way, I’m not saying the pandemic was good, but there are definitely silver linings and I really like the fact that you are utilizing that mode of education. Well, let me turn a corner here. And I want to ask you, as you look across the landscape of school security, what are some of the most significant changes that you have seen, and let’s just say over the last few years?

Michele Gay (25:17):

Wow, over the last few years, I think a much more positive engagement of a variety, of stakeholders, which doesn’t sound on its face like it would be all that innovative, but boy has it been a game changer, like we talked about involving students and teachers and, you know, really a variety of perspectives. we’ve got, you know, school resource officers working hand in hand with school psychologists and, you know principals working hand in hand with facilities directors, and, you know, everybody really unified, I think in a, in a very unique way our around protecting our schools, our kids, and our communities. I think technology continues to just change the landscape. I think when I, if I had a crystal ball, I think that’s gonna be one of the most exciting things in the next 10 years in terms of how we set our students and staff up for success for safety in schools.

(26:13):

We’re really now at the very cusp of AI stepping into everything in a big way. And of course, there are things that we need to be very cautious with, but the potential to support, you know, some of our practices is, is undeniable. And I think if I could wish anything it would be, and I think, I think technology and, and good tools and good education that we’ve all been advocating for, for, for so long, they’re all gonna help. But I think the sort of depoliticization, if you will, of school safety is where I think will really, as you said, turn the corner. You know, I think if we can get folks to really focus on what we are trying to accomplish together and how to get there together, you know, dealing with facts, dealing with realities and, and as much as we can, even though it’s very personal and emotional to keep our kids and our schools safe, to really, you know, approach these things in a not political way, in a, in a way that’s pure of heart, I really think that’s gonna make all the difference for us in, in the next several years.

Paul Timm (27:18):

That’s well said. Of course. And if our friend Melissa Reeves was here, I think she would agree because she’s on the mental health side of things. I’ve always been on the physical security side of things, and I remember just, I don’t know, 5, 6, 8 years ago thinking, when will there ever be a reaching across the aisle? There were so many schools who would say, oh, we’re, we don’t need any of those hardcore physical security things, even though that’s never what I touted. And then there were other schools that would say, we don’t need those soft programmatic things. They don’t really do anything, and both sides were wrong. We hope that there’s not going to be a democratic agenda or a Republican agenda. We hope that people can reach across the aisle and begin to work together knowing that if we stay in those places where we have just that agenda, we’re really not covering all of our bases. And that, of course, takes us back to your comprehensive approach, which I am all about. So thank you for, for doing that. And, you know, between the two of us and many others, we’re gonna, we’re gonna keep chipping away and get things done that Michelle, I think is most of the time that we have today. But I, I would love for you if you are interested to leave us maybe with a parting word or two of wisdom

Michele Gay (28:37):

Wow, wisdom. Hmm. I’m gonna borrow my wisdom, from Joey. You’ve heard me talk a little bit about her personality and she was, you know, very persistent which was, which was such a good thing for a child with so many challenges in, in this life. But, you know, this work is hard, and as I said, kind of at the top of our conversation, we sometimes get fooled into thinking that we can jump into it and there’ll be some kind of quick fix or easy answer. And if there’s anything I learned from Joey, it was to, you know, stay the course. Think about what it is that you wanna accomplish, and just keep getting up <laugh>, keep, you know, keep staring it down, keep coming back. It’s okay if you get knocked down. It’s okay if you know you made a mistake, you change course, you correct course you do better next time you find people who support you and can work alongside you.

(29:31):

And I feel like that’s what we’ve done, Paul, you know, the, the past 10 years and, and you have been at this a lot longer than I have been so far. But I feel like where we find our teammates, if you will, you know, we really champion this, this cause and, and we really are making a difference for our kiddos. So yeah. So I would borrow from Joey and just remind everybody to keep at it. And you know, the payoff when we look back, the payoff is real. You know, we see kids growing and learning and, and we’re learning from them and we’re making our communities and our schools safer every day.

Paul Timm (30:05):

Well said. Thank you for joining us today, Michele. It’s always an honor to connect with you.

Michele Gay (30:11):

Thanks, Paul.

Paul Timm (30:13):

I’m so thankful for the good work of Michele Gay and Safe and Sound Schools, especially their focus on the special needs population. And our next episode will be joined by Guy Lesner with the Idaho School Safety Center. Please subscribe today and share this podcast with your colleagues for any questions. Feel free to reach out to us via our email K12podcast@allegion.com. Just be sure to include the name of the podcast episode in the subject line. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Paul Tim PSP on Twitter at School Security, or on our Allegion, US social media channels. Thanks for listening and be safe.

#SandyHook #MicheleGay #EspeciallySafe #PaulTimm #schoolsecurity #schoolsafety #PhysicalSecurity #Podcast

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From Tragedy to Advocacy: Redefining School Security After Sandy Hook

Episode 1 Transcript: From Tragedy to Advocacy: Redefining School Security After Sandy Hook

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Episode 1 Transcript: From Tragedy to Advocacy: Redefining School Security After Sandy Hook

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