In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, and in an attempt to make schools safer, Florida is now the second state in the country, after New Jersey, to adopt Alyssa’s Law, named after one of the shooting victims.
The state committed to allocate $8 million to implement the statewide mobile alert system for schools, despite a pandemic and budget cuts.
Thanks to Senator Lauren Book (D-Plantation) and State Representatives Michael Gottlieb and Dan Daley, Alyssa’s Law unanimously passed the Florida House of Representatives and was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 30.
“We’re so excited to get this bill passed,” says Book, a mother of two-year-old twins and an advocate for students and educational issues.
The bill is named in honor of Alyssa Alhadeff, an honor student, then 14, who was murdered on Valentine’s Day 2018 while in her classroom at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, along with 13 of her schoolmates, and 3 staff members. The bill mandates that all public schools in the state of Florida install silent alarms that will be directly connected to local law enforcement in a state of emergency.
According to her parents, Ilan and Lori Alhadeff, Alyssa was “bright, energetic, happy, athletic – a pure ray of sunshine who lit up every room with her warm smile. She was an honor student, a good friend who was known to stay up later than she should have in order to support others, a winning debater, and a star soccer player, the captain of her traveling team.”
Alyssa’s parents founded the non-profit Make Our Schools Safe, with a mission of empowering students and staff to create and maintain a culture of safety and vigilance in a secure school environment. Part of those efforts was lobbying for the passage of the Alyssa’s Law bill.
“In the massacre at MSD, milliseconds mattered – and the lack of real-time coordination between first responders likely cost precious lives,” Book said in a statement after the bill was signed.
The Parkland Commission, set up after the tragedy to determine what went wrong, found that chaos and delayed response time contributed to unnecessary loss of life.
Beginning with the 2021 school year, Alyssa’s Law will require all public elementary and secondary schools to install either silent panic alarms, a cellphone app, or alternative emergency mechanisms approved by The Department of Education from which to silently alert the police.
In an interview with local Tallahassee TV station WTXL, Lori Alhadeff, now a member of the Broward School Board said “We didn’t have panic buttons. If we had an Alyssa’s Alert, teachers would have seen it on their phones and would have known how to respond properly. They could have locked and barricaded their rooms and got[ten] out of the line of fire.”
Alhadeff’s goal is to get all 50 states to pass Alyssa’s Law.
Visit: makeourschoolssafe.org
To help bring Alyssa’s Law to the national level, visit: change.org/p/u-s-house-of-representatives-pass-the- alyssa-law-at-the-national-level?recruiter=985442548&utm_ source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&recruited_by_ id=c6ac5260-a9a9-11e9-aa54-e9ab6b748c2a
By Jan Engoren