Following the 2018 mass shooting tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the family of victim Alyssa Alhadeff successfully fought to establish Alyssa’s Law, state-based legislation that mandates all public elementary and secondary school buildings be equipped with silent panic alarms that directly notify law enforcement of an incident.
The legislation first became law in 2020 in New Jersey, Alyssa’s home state. Six more states have since followed suit, including Florida (2020), New York (2022), Texas (2023), Tennessee (2023), Utah (2024), and Oklahoma (2024). Versions of the legislation are also currently pending in 13 other states: Nebraska, Arizona, Virginia, Oregon, Georgia, Michigan, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Ohio, Illinois, South Carolina, and Washington. According to WVNews, West Virginia Education Committee also recently advanced its version of Alyssa’s Law, Senate Bill 434 (SB 434). It has now been referred to the finance committee for further consideration.
While Alyssa’s Law continues to gain momentum at the state level, there have been attempts at making it a federal law. If there was a federal law, what would its impact be and what might it look like? To answer these questions and more, we spoke to Lauren Kravetz, VP of Government Affairs at Intrado Life & Safety, and former Chief of Staff, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
RELATED ARTICLE: 7 Years Later: The Heroes and Victims of the Parkland School Shooting
Kravetz supports a federal Alyssa’s Law for several reasons (1:11).
“A federal Alyssa’s Law would avoid creating a patchwork of state and territorial laws that focus on potentially different things to promote school safety. The best way to illustrate how challenging this patchwork could be is to look at what’s happening now with privacy. There’s no federal law nationwide. There’s no standard for what personal information needs to be protected and how, so states are filling that gap and they’re enacting their own laws to protect their consumers, which is creating a situation where different states potentially protect different things in different ways. This places different burdens on private companies, which makes it significantly more difficult to serve consumers in more than one state,” Kravetz told Campus Safety. “Applied to school safety, having potentially dozens of different state laws out there would add complication versus having one law that covers the entire country and makes it less likely that certain states would require a bespoke solution.”
Having the uniformity of a federal law would also make things less costly and allow for faster development and deployment, Kravetz said. The longer it takes to enact a federal law, the more difficult it will be to arrive at something that everyone can get behind as more and more states enact their own versions of Alyssa’s Law.
“At the end of the day, the most important thing is that where you live should not determine how safe your child is at school,” she continued. “And that’s really the most important reason why a federal law makes the most sense to make sure that students are protected in every state.”
What Would a Federal Alyssa’s Law Look Like?
While a countrywide Alyssa’s Law doesn’t yet exist, there are several bills that have been introduced at the federal level, providing some insight into what lawmakers are considering for legislation related to panic alarms (4:48). The first is the Alyssa Act, which was introduced by Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. The bill has 28 co-sponsors.
“This bill would incentivize adopting a silent panic alarm technology solution by conditioning the receipt of funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on schools being equipped with at least one silent panic alarm,” said Kravetz. “The Alyssa Act would require schools to have silent alarms to reduce emergency response times, providing first responders as much information as possible with direct connections to 911.”
The other bill is the Safer Schools Act of 2023, which was introduced by Representatives Roger Williams of Texas and Jared Moskowitz of Florida.
RELATED ARTICLE: More Campuses Adopting Panic Alarm Tech, Most Satisfied with System Performance
“This bill would establish a grant program of $600 million over five years administered by the Department of Justice. It’s written to encourage schools to conduct an independent security assessment and then make hard security improvements as a condition of receiving the grant,” Kravetz continued. “Hard security improvements could include silent alarm systems. The grants would cover 50% of the cost with the school district providing the rest. The Safer Schools Act is based on schools doing a security assessment, and it encourages silent alarms. But most important, that one creates a funding mechanism.”
Hesitations in Adopting Silent Panic Alarms
In her job role, Kravetz interacts with customers in Washington, D.C. who are involved in education policy, and like with anything new, there are some hesitations among end users to adopt silent panic alarms (12:28).
“The biggest thing I’ve heard is that some teachers and faculty may not want to have an app on their personal phone that activates a silent alarm, and instead would rather wear a silent panic button about the size of a credit card on a lanyard,” she said.
Other concerns are cost of adopting the solution and lack of knowledge on how the technology works — the latter which she refers to as the “sleeper issue.”
“We’re still in early innings here, and it’s important to help schools and educators understand the value and why they should expend time and resources to make use of these tools. For example, I’ve heard a couple questions about whether emergency responders will have school specific information when an emergency happens,” she said. “The answer is that — at least I can only really speak to Intrado Safety Suite solution — but at least with our solution, they certainly will. But it takes more than just the panic buttons. And maybe that’s why there’s a question here. The panic buttons are one element and they have to be connected to an incident management platform. Think of it as the brain that will enable the direct integration to 911, and as I mentioned, the direct integration to 911 is key to reducing the emergency response times. I think this is a really good moment for the education community to take a beat and educate itself, no pun intended, on what the solutions are that are out there.”
RELATED ARTICLE: How Wearable Technology Keeps Hospitals and Schools Safer
For schools considering purchasing a panic alarm system, Kravetz urges bringing public safety to the table early on in the process.
“I’ve heard too many stories about the 911 centers that found out after the fact that the school district was purchasing a safety solution. The public safety folks should be part of the conversation from the beginning,” said said. “We really need to promote a collaborative ecosystem where 911 call centers, schools, and first responders all work together. And that sort of relationship is a basic of emergency preparedness that we work on for emergency response at the federal level all the time.”
During this discussion, Kravetz also shared:
- Which federal agencies should be involved in establishing guidelines for a federal Alyssa’s Law (15:18)
- Strategies schools and agencies have garnered to ensure unified integration between schools, law enforcement, and emergency first responders (12:28)
- Her predictions on the timeline for the passing of a federal Alyssa’s Law (17:14)
