About 16 months after New Jersey approved Alyssa’s Law to mandate installation of silent panic alarms in public elementary and secondary schools statewide, Florida’s governor signed a similar law to improve school security there—the site of one of the nation’s deadliest school massacres.
“Today, another victory for the memory of Alyssa Alhadeff and the Alhadeff family. Florida Governor [Ron] DeSantis signed Alyssa’s Law,” wrote Woodcliff Lake Mayor Carlos Rendo recently on his Facebook page.
“I’m glad that States are starting to pass and enact Alyssa’s Law. Everyone wants safer schools. I hope that Congress works on enacting the law and that President [Donald] Trump signs it. It’s a law that makes sense,” said Rendo.
Rendo posted a photo of Florida Gov. DeSantis displaying the newly signed law, flanked by Alyssa’s parents, Ilan Alhadeff and Lori Alhadeff, who held a photo of Alyssa.
On Feb. 14, 2018, Alyssa, a 14-year-old former Woodcliff Lake resident, along with 16 other students and faculty, were murdered by a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in one of the nation’s worst school-shooting tragedies.
New Jersey’s law—signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in February 2019—mandates the installation of panic alarms, with funding available through the Securing Our Children’s Future Bond Act, passed by voters in November 2018. Many schools statewide have installed such alarms on their own, even before funding became available.
A federal Alyssa’s Law bill to mandate panic alarms nationwide was introduced in mid-July 2019 by U.S. Reps. Roger Williams (R-Texas) and Ted Deutch (D-Florida).
The bill requires all public schools nationwide to install at least one silent panic alarm, which alerts other students and faculty in the school to an active shooter and also alerts local police. The original bill appropriated $2 billion for security grants to pay for risk assessments and security upgrades.
Also last August, Fifth District Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) followed that bill by introducing the ALYSSA Act (Alyssa’s Legacy Youth in School Safety Act), (H.R. 4606) which mandated panic alarms and facilitated hiring of school resource officers.
The bill currently rests in both the House Committee on Education and Labor and House Committee on the Judiciary, said James Adams, Gottheimer’s communications director.
“As we see policies for silent alarms in schools pass at the state level, I remain hopeful that we’ll be able to make the change nationwide as well,” Gottheimer told Pascack Press Aug. 4.
Generally, school resource officers in New Jersey are full-time police officers, with salary and benefits. However, another category of school security officers—known as Special Law Enforcement Officers or SLEOs—have been authorized under state law and receive the same training as SROs.
SLEOs are retired police officers, paid no benefits because they already receive them, who work full-time in the schools. Generally, most SROs and SLEOs are armed.
Efforts to find out the status of Gottheimer’s bill were not returned by his Glen Rock office before press time.
Gottheimer introduced the ALYSSA Act in the House of Representatives on Aug. 1, 2019. Gottheimer noted 98,000 public schools nationwide could be required to install silent alarms, and also help facilitate funds for more school resource officers.
He said shootings in Illinois and Maryland in 2018 were thwarted by school resource officers.
Some districts, however, are now questioning the role of school resource officers in schools given recent movements for racial justice, kicked off by the death of George Floyd, an African American who died while being restrained by a white police officer.
Gottheimer said then that funds for such officers were available through a federal program called COPS—or Community Oriented Policing Services, part of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Gottheimer also noted 27 percent of schools nationwide use silent panic alarms to alert law enforcement.
During a press briefing held last August at a soccer field in Woodcliff Lake, Lori Alhadeff said the shooting—which occurred about 30 months ago—constituted “a multitude of failures at so many levels. We know that lives could have been saved that day if help was there faster,” she said.
Ilan Alhadeff noted that school shootings are generally over in six minutes or less and instant communication alerting students and police was critical
“Are there any more valuable jewels than our kids and teachers in our schools?” he asked then.
“Together, with silent alarms in every school directly connected to local law enforcement agencies and with School Resource Officers at more schools around the country, we are taking concrete steps to help further protect our children in school. That is, I know, Lori and Ilan’s number one priority, and as a dad of a 7-year-old and 10-year-old, it is to me, too,” said Gottheimer last year.