Why Not Use The Ridiculous Amounts of COVID Relief Million$ Collecting Dust to Secure Our Schools?
Talk to the author of, School Insecurity: A Comprehensive Guide for Parents and Educators on School Security, Protecting Your Children, and Fostering a Safe Learning Environment
Do schools know there is Covid money available that can be used for life safety and security?
Approximately $4.7 Trillion dollars was budgeted for Covid response. $4.3 trillion is the total outlay according to USAspending.gov/disaster/covid-19. That leaves approximately $500 billion dollars hanging out there that could be spent to secure our nation’s schools.
PUBLIUS GUEST AUTHOR: Wayne Black, author of School Insecurity: A Comprehensive Guide for Parents and Educators on School Security, Protecting Your Children, and Fostering a Safe Learning Environment.
Many schools still have unused Covid funds unspent. Most were told to spend as they see fit and some may be using the money for building repairs and additions. States and school districts reported spending nearly $3.7 billion in federal Covid-recovery funding in the month of July bringing the total spend to more than $113 billion or 59.6 percent of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, according to the latest federal data.
There is a 2nd and 3rd round of ESSER funding which expires in September 2024. States and school districts have spent only about 45 percent of this available money.
There are four simple solutions that would have prevented all school mass shootings.
Interior secure, ballistic classroom and staff doors
Individual wireless devise such as a radio and a school wide active shooter alarm system with blue strobes and horns
Locked main entry and perimeter doors fitted with force resistant glass to deny unauthorized physical entry.
An armed SRO (School Resource Officer) on duty always when students are present at each school.
After the mass shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and teachers dead with 17 other injured, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has been proposing spending unused Covid money to make school safer across the country, since 2022. Under his Securing Our Schools Act of 2022 Cruz wanted $15 billion to double the number of school resource officers, $10 billion to hire 15,000 mental health professionals for middle and high schools and $2.56 billion for physical security improvements at schools. The bill was blocked on the senate floor.
The unused Covid money is just sitting there while many schools are unprotected and underfunded pertaining to student life safety. We have had school shootings after Senator Cruz was blocked and we will have more school shootings in the future. Senator Cruz tried again this year and again was blocked.
BIO: Wayne Black, author of School Insecurity: A Comprehensive Guide for Parents and Educators on School Security, Protecting Your Children, and Fostering a Safe Learning Environment, has more than forty-five years of professional security experience in both the public and private sectors.
Black is the founder of Wayne Black & Associates, a Miami-based security consulting firm. He was a Miami-Dade police detective and later an Organized Crime Group Supervisor for State Attorney Janet Reno. Later, for more than a decade, Black was the personal security detail leader for former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Black is a nationally certified firearms instructor who regularly trains armed private school and house of worship personnel as well as law enforcement. He also conducts threat assessments for government agencies, schools, and houses of worship.
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Wayne Black, author of School Insecurity: A Comprehensive Guide for Parents and Educators on School Security, Protecting Your Children, and Fostering a Safe Learning Environment.