Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Alex Sol. A few months ago, a powerful idea struck me - a solution to protect students, children, and faculty from the horrifying reality of school shootings that plague our campuses, from kindergarten to college. I named this solution The Safe Zone Solution. It is truly alarming how swiftly a shooter can devastate an entire community within a matter of seconds. The reason behind these catastrophic events is the lack of relevant adjustments that schools desperately need to codify into their building codes to combat this ever-present threat.

 

Let's take a moment to imagine the level of ingenuity and collaboration we recently witnessed when NASA mathematicians, scientists, and engineers worked together, allocating a staggering 324 million dollars to intentionally collide a satellite with an asteroid millions of miles away, moving at thousands of miles per hour. Their goal was to test if we could alter the trajectory of the meteor and prevent an almost impossible collision with Earth. Yet, when it comes to finding innovative solutions to ensure the safety of our students and faculty in the face of the certainty of yet another school shooting, it seems that nobody has a clear answer. Where is the cavalry? Where is the sense of urgency? Where are the best and brightest minds, working tirelessly to protect our children and students? Either they are not seeking answers, or we are collectively looking in all the wrong places for solutions that are not relevant to the core issue.

 

We have been searching for answers outside of the school, when in reality, the solution to school shootings lies within the very walls of our educational institutions. Let me clarify. Upon delving into the dynamics of school shootings, it becomes painfully evident that schools lack the necessary safety requirements to protect against bullets, unlike their preparedness for fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods. This is where the problem lies.

 

Consider the mandatory safety standards for fires in schools, where sprinklers are installed to offer immediate protection in case of a fire. Similarly, retrofitting buildings with earthquake safety measures ensures the safety of students during such catastrophic events. However, the absence of bullet shield glass, which is specifically designed to protect students during shootings by effectively halting a shooter from breaching entryways, is not mandated in the building code under law as a student emergency safety feature. This is a prime example of how legislative oversight remains a liability to the safety of our students. When it comes to bullets, schools are inadequately equipped. The entryways and current school doors have proven to be ineffective in protecting students, tragically resulting in numerous fatalities.

 

This is a failure in school emergency safety standards. Legislative injustice and neglect are at the crux of the matter. If necessity is the mother of invention, there could not be a greater need to imagine a simple way of preventing entry, providing secure safe zones within classrooms, and utilizing the very best advanced response technology. By doing so, we can exponentially ensure far greater safety for our communities' children, students, and teachers. This is precisely where The Safe Zone Solution comes into play - a solution that provides the highest probability of survival during a school shooting.

 

So, what is The Safe Zone Solution? I was inspired by the concept of critical redundancy utilized in the aviation industry to ensure the highest standard of safety during travel. With this in mind, I developed The Safe Zone Solution for schools. But let me elaborate further on the problem at hand. The alarming rise in school shootings since Columbine necessitates a simple yet effective approach to prevention. Hence, The Safe Zone Solution encompasses three crucial points that all support and reinforce one another:

 

1.  Fortifying the exterior entryway of schools with bullet-resistant glazing is essential. This aims to prevent sudden and unexpected breaches that catch students and educators off guard, hindering their ability to coordinate a response and ensure their safety.

 

2. The solution requires the installation of bullet-resistant doors in every classroom. Currently, when individuals manage to find refuge inside a room, there is no guarantee that the shooter won't breach the door, leaving those inside vulnerable and terrified. By implementing bullet-resistant minimum level 4 security doors on every classroom, the Safe Zone Solution creates a safe space for educators and students already in their classrooms, while also allowing individuals stuck in hallways to quickly reach safe zones. This expedient benefit significantly enhances student and teacher safety during a school shooting event.

 

3. The Safe Zone Solution mandates that all law enforcement agencies utilize the latest alert technologies. This includes enabling police en route to the school to see the cameras inside the premises, allowing them to identify the shooter's location and potentially communicate with them using the PA system if necessary. By pre-identifying the shooter's location, the response time is dramatically reduced, enabling law enforcement to neutralize the threat more swiftly and allowing emergency medical technicians to tend to victims in a significantly shorter time frame.

 

By implementing these three measures, the Safe Zone Solution aims to provide students, teachers, and parents with the daily mental health benefit of knowing that the room their children are in will provide the safety they need when they need it. Similar to the anxiety and fear of traveling in a car without seat belts or airbags with your child inside, the current state of school safety leaves students, teachers, and parents feeling unsafe in the event of a shooter attack. This anxiety is burdensome and must be addressed. The Safe Zone Solution strives to make schools as safe as students and teachers require them to be, regardless of the cost.

 

In a world where school shootings have become all too common, it is imperative that we demand relevant solutions and concepts that dramatically reduce the scope of these tragic events, ideally resulting in zero loss of life. The Safe Zone Solution offers a simple yet effective approach to providing substantially more protection for students, faculty, and schools.

 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

 

Sincerely,

 

Alex Sol