Officials at the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Training Summit in Springfield are providing an update on efforts to increase school safety.
After the Parkland School shooting in February of 2018, a school safety working group developed 13 recommendations to fight school violence.
According to the working group chair, Mike Chamness, many of the ideas are now being implemented.
In January the state will roll out the “Safe 2 Tell Illinois “ program. The program is to provide an anonymous venue for parents, students, teachers, school administrators, and law enforcement to share information.
The program was first conceived in Colorado in the wake of the Collumbine school shooting.
Chamness spoke on the need for students to speak up.
“If you go back and look at the after action reports of acts of school violence across this country for the last decade or more. In almost every instance, at least one other student knew something bad was going to happen, and for reasons you can guess why teenagers don’t step forward, no one stepped forward and talked.”
Other programs such as a proposed law requiring schools to hold active shooter drills have been discussed.
Camness said that over 4000 “Stop the Bleed Kits” have been distributed to public and private schools across Illinois.
“We have now distributed almost 4000 kits, one to every school in the state. And we will distribute five more to every attendance center, once at least five people have been trained in that attendance center in a district.”
The kits are designed to give the user immediate access to tools and products to stop traumatic bleeding.