After two years in the making, Protecting Our Students effectively launched on February 2, 2020. A nonpartisan non-profit, our sole mission is to formulate and provide a standardized and universal assessment tool and policy to eliminate gun shootings throughout our K-12 school system.
Why We Focus on Protecting Our Students
I’m proud to say that Protecting Our Students is the brainchild of brothers. It grew from many conversations with my older brother, who has worked in secondary education for over 30 years. Together, we both grew tired of seeing young students and their relatives and friends suffer from gun violence and our passion to end such violence in schools was born.
When it comes to improving the safety of our schools, Protecting Our Students will leave no stone unturned. Accordingly, we work with a wide range of national school safety professionals like Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS), Certified School Safety Professionals, School Security Specialists, Campus Security & Life Safety, and Dr. Langman with School Shooters as well as Law Enforcement and Government Agencies including the Homeland Security, FBI, FEMA, the National Sheriffs’ Association. Together, we will end the experience of premature loss of life in our K-12 schools sooner than later.
We are not the only non-profit dedicated to ending school shootings. However, we believe our unique approach to building a nationwide partnership between school administrators and security industry professions is the most effective way to achieve our ultimate goal: To protect our students from gun violence in schools, nationwide.
How We Protect Our Students
While the development and implementation of a universal assessment process for schools is a great undertaking, I, along with my team and partners, are up for the challenge and are dedicated to seeing our POSSafetyNet℠ implemented nationwide.
What is POSSafetyNet℠? Very simply, it’s an assessment tool that evaluates schools for vulnerabilities and then frames best-practice programs. Once a school is appraised, the Protecting Our Students network of certified security professionals implements a standardized Emergency Operating Plan (EOP), thereby making all schools, by demography, safer under a more standardized safety K-12 EOP.
Why do we feel security is the best approach to protecting America’s students? To understand requires a look — not just at individual incidents of gun violence in schools — but at the overall trends.
When Did School Shootings Start?
The first incident of gun violence in an American school eighty years ago. The incident, although traumatic, was singular. Although sporadic school shootings occurred at various points in the following half a century, they, also, were too dissimilar and sporadic to be considered a trend.
In short, school shootings are not new — but, around 1979, something changed.
The displays of mass violence that U.S. parents and communities have slowly become accustomed to as a new reality are actually a trend that’s been slowly growing for four decades.
With school violence resulting in a death toll of 12 students throughout the entire 1980s, it was still too early for school shootings to register as a concern. The 1990s brought a total of 36 deaths from gun violence in schools — still easily dismissed as “an inner-city problem.”
It wasn’t until the Columbine High School Massacre that parents across the country began to sit up and pay attention.
Blame was thrown at every possible instigator in a desperate attempt to learn why — music, video games, and movies were all scrutinized as potential influencers. What other reason could there be for two twelfth grade students to spend months methodically planning an attack that, if committed by any other party, would have been immediately labeled terrorism?
Over 40 Years We See An Alarming Trend
Two decades later, we’re still trying to answer why. And, while the country continues to debate the cause of school shootings, they’ve risen an alarming 183%.
In 2018, Science Daily published a study titled “Rapid rise in mass school shootings in the United States, study shows.” The study’s subtitle, itself, is a call to action: Researchers call for action to address the worrying increase in the number of mass school shootings in the past two decades.
The study’s authors cite that more people have died or been injured in mass school shootings in the United States in the past 18 years than in the entire 20th century, and label school shootings an alarming trend. No single solution is proposed. Instead, the study simply urges readers to start acting:
“Preventative efforts not only require policy and legislative action but increased and targeted funding across federal, state, local and private sectors.”
Despite the continuous assault on students, school gun safety remains disorganized, decentralized, and inefficient. Methods and approaches vary from state-to-state and while some have many preventive resources, others do not. That’s where Protecting Our Students becomes relevant and why we are diligent and dedicated to bridging the gaps.
How YOU Can Help Protect Our Students
We now call on concerned citizens, communities, and businesses to join us in our crusade! We cannot do this alone and graciously ask for donations—even as little as $0.63 a day, just $19 a month, allows us to further our cause and message. Recognizing communities may wish to get involved as well, we’ve developed point-of-sale programs for retailers, small business and auto dealership campaigns. Individuals interested in contributing to our movement are encouraged to contact me directly, Robert Jordan, at info@protectingourstudents.org.
Additionally, I invite you to visit our website for links to guidance, training materials, research, and news for those looking to understand further what we’re up against in our mission to end school shootings and how to help. All resources cited are predicated on prevailing policies in state and local communities. However, many safety policies demand modernization, revisions, unification, and integration across our national educational system. Further, we outline steps we all can take—families, communities, schools, houses of worship, law enforcement, medical professionals, government, etc.
There is no denying there’s a problem, so I ask that you not turn away. It’s people like us who need to look at the problem, support the cause, and help fund the solution that works. Because at the end of the day, our children are priceless.
Protecting Our Students is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded by Robert Jordan who is driven by a passion to end gun violence in schools and provide all children with a safe learning environment. We collaborate directly with schools, public and private consultants, certified school safety professionals, crisis preparedness specialists, law enforcement, and government agencies to provide a universal policy to end school shootings in K-12 schools. For more information, please visit www.protectingourstudents.org or follow POS on Facebook or Twitter.
