I often speak of my time in the classroom, and more often than not when I do I reference the mental load that educators across this country face. It’s the overwhelming lack of enough, in nearly all aspects of education, that teachers and administrators carry the burden of daily. They want to make their schools safer, they know they need to make their schools safer, but they are not trained situational awareness experts. When learning the ins and outs of curriculum in college education courses, they are not also learning how to handle the worst-case scenario of an intruder who intends to harm children. It’s for those reasons, that I am so pleased that Status Solutions and Status Solutions Network have partnered with ZeroNow, as well as other industry leaders, on their collaboration for the “Path to Safer Schools Exhibition.”
This 30×80 exhibit, which was promoted by and unveiled at the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) conference in San Diego last week, invites education leaders to physically experience the sequential steps crucial to improving school safety. In other words, it’s a real-life, step-by-step, how-to manual. Or maybe we should call it a lesson plan because that’s truly what it is. It spells out the goal of safer schools and then explains in 7 steps how to achieve it. Sometimes, all it takes is someone saying, “I can show you how. Let me break it down for you” to make it all seem just a little bit more doable.
Status Solutions is proud of the role we play in helping schools achieve steps 4, 5, and 6. For over 23 years we have been the leader in situational awareness platforms with our award-winning solutions and we’re not slowing down anytime soon. You can read more about our K-12 offerings and our Grant of Use that we offer schools with no red tape here.
Step 3: Funding
For now, though we want to focus on Step 3, it’s what seems to trip everyone up– Funding! We decided years ago that funding could no longer be a hurdle for schools. As we like to say at Status, kids don’t have an economy. This is why we offer our core solution, SARA (Situational Awareness and Response Assistant) through a Grant of Use. But we also know that’s not enough. We want schools to be able to grow and advance as the technology does. So we invented the Status Solutions Network, a digital advertising program with the sole purpose of funding school safety. In the same way that businesses pay for commercials to run during primetime TV so that all across America people can watch for free, we offer local businesses the opportunity to advertise on our Network Directory, and then funnel funds from those advertisement dollars right back to the school or district to be used for safety. This is a franchise opportunity, so we even find a local entrepreneur in your area to run the program. That’s what this program is really about, bringing the local community together to step up and help protect students and teachers. And ideally to take a little weight off that mental load that all educators carry.
I’m not going to be so bold as to claim that any of the steps on the Path to Safer Schools are easy. I know it’s an undertaking, but I also know it has to be done. And I know that the cost of not taking these steps is just too high a price to pay.
If you would like to learn more about Status Solutions’ safety technology please contact us at info@statussolutions.com. If you’re interested in bringing our funding program to your area, please reach out to info@statussolutionsnetwork.com.
The Path to Safer Schools was designed by Jeff McWeeney – https://www.addl.co
About the Author
Laura Hartman is a former middle and high school English teacher. Currently, she is the Director of Community Engagement for Status Solutions and Status Solutions Network in Westerville, Ohio, where she calls upon her years of experience in the classroom to aid the company’s mission of protecting the vulnerable and preventing violence in schools.
