house Bill H.R. 5787
Do School Districts Need Grants to Buy Devices to Alert First Responders of Emergencies?
Argument in favor
First responders and law enforcement need to be able to get to a school as quickly as possible when an emergency breaks out. SOS buttons in classrooms would give students and teachers another way to call for help if something goes wrong.
08/31/2016
Until the congress and senate stop the NRA, we must do everything and anything to help protect students and teachers!
···
08/30/2016
All these people talking about how everyone has a cell phone and how that solves this problem, but that is actually what creates this problem. A 911 call from a cell phone is 1. Hard to immediately locate (a land line is always tied to a fixed address) 2. The high traffic of 911 calls to understaffed underfunded dispatch centers it could be precious minutes (sometimes 30-45 before the caller is connected to a real person) before the first of several hundreds of the same phone call come in. I'm sure there are cheaper ways and maybe this bill needs to be revised, but expecting our incredibly underfunded and under appreciated education system to scrounge together the money needed to streamline the safety of our future frankly is preposterous.
···
08/30/2016
While this is not a game changer, it is a move that provides psychological security and, adds further efficiency to keeping our children safe. Yet, most importantly, it encourages the habit of giving funds to our school districts, a habit many states seem to lack. If it has to start here, so be it.
Argument opposed
There’s no need for federal grants to be used to fund the purchase and installation of these SOS buttons in classrooms. If local school districts want them that badly, they should use their own funds to buy and set them up.
···
08/30/2016
While I am in support of protecting our children's safety, I do not believe a SOS button will have any effect. With all due respect to Rep. Gwen Graham (D-FL), your justification for this bill is that it will help better secure our schools from violence & potential acts of terrorism. I fail to see how a SOS button accomplishes this. If nothing else, it perhaps would give some a sense of comfort from a psychological perspective at best. If a school feels strongly about it, then they should fund it within their budget.
···
08/30/2016
HECK NO! Let the school districts cut their "administrative costs" and/or work out a plan to get those devices through their state or local government! If I were in charge of a school district, the LAST thing I'd want would be any kind of "grant" from the federal government! That's like the horse that agreed to let a wolf ride on his back to cross a river. You can imagine how foolish the horse was to trust the wolf! IMHO, I don't think ANY part of the Obama Administration is deserving of our trust, least of all (perhaps) the Department of (In)justice!
08/30/2016
I'm trying to think of a scenario where if a lone gunman, of even if there were multiple gunmen, kicked down the front doors of any school, rushed in, and started firing whatever firearms they might be carrying, how could this attack be executed in a manner which would incapacitate everyone in that building to the point where not even a single person could use either their own personal cellphone or a landline and call local law enforcement. I can't do it. I can't get there. Somebody, somewhere, on the premises will hear the shots being fired and be able to immediately call for help. So is there a need for grant money to be disbursed for local schools to have an "SOS" button in every classroom in case of a worse case scenario, even if that scenario was a health emergency or a national disaster in stead of a shooting? No there isn't.
Until the congress and senate stop the NRA, we must do everything and anything to help protect students and teachers!
While I am in support of protecting our children's safety, I do not believe a SOS button will have any effect. With all due respect to Rep. Gwen Graham (D-FL), your justification for this bill is that it will help better secure our schools from violence & potential acts of terrorism. I fail to see how a SOS button accomplishes this. If nothing else, it perhaps would give some a sense of comfort from a psychological perspective at best. If a school feels strongly about it, then they should fund it within their budget.
HECK NO! Let the school districts cut their "administrative costs" and/or work out a plan to get those devices through their state or local government! If I were in charge of a school district, the LAST thing I'd want would be any kind of "grant" from the federal government! That's like the horse that agreed to let a wolf ride on his back to cross a river. You can imagine how foolish the horse was to trust the wolf! IMHO, I don't think ANY part of the Obama Administration is deserving of our trust, least of all (perhaps) the Department of (In)justice!
I'm trying to think of a scenario where if a lone gunman, of even if there were multiple gunmen, kicked down the front doors of any school, rushed in, and started firing whatever firearms they might be carrying, how could this attack be executed in a manner which would incapacitate everyone in that building to the point where not even a single person could use either their own personal cellphone or a landline and call local law enforcement. I can't do it. I can't get there. Somebody, somewhere, on the premises will hear the shots being fired and be able to immediately call for help. So is there a need for grant money to be disbursed for local schools to have an "SOS" button in every classroom in case of a worse case scenario, even if that scenario was a health emergency or a national disaster in stead of a shooting? No there isn't.
Just another excuse to spend our money! Every child, teacher and janitor has a cell phone and almost all buildings in the modern world have a fire alarm, it's that little red square thing on the wall that says "in case of emergency, pull". Only an idiot politician would think that by adding another button it will make emergency services come faster.
All these people talking about how everyone has a cell phone and how that solves this problem, but that is actually what creates this problem. A 911 call from a cell phone is 1. Hard to immediately locate (a land line is always tied to a fixed address) 2. The high traffic of 911 calls to understaffed underfunded dispatch centers it could be precious minutes (sometimes 30-45 before the caller is connected to a real person) before the first of several hundreds of the same phone call come in. I'm sure there are cheaper ways and maybe this bill needs to be revised, but expecting our incredibly underfunded and under appreciated education system to scrounge together the money needed to streamline the safety of our future frankly is preposterous.
NO NO NO!!!! No more Federal authority! Leave our schools to the local and States.
While this is not a game changer, it is a move that provides psychological security and, adds further efficiency to keeping our children safe. Yet, most importantly, it encourages the habit of giving funds to our school districts, a habit many states seem to lack. If it has to start here, so be it.
This is a waste of money. Response time for police being dispatched to schools is far faster than any other emergency.
These devices are something that could easily be added to the school districts' existing budget, no need to get the DOJ and federal gov involved.
Permitting teachers to have cellular phones would be a far better (and less costly) idea. 911 system is designed for emergencies and can work better than a wall mounted alarm button to help first responders know the nature of the emergency.
Wouldn't dialing 911 on any phone do the same thing?? Why is another devise needed?
We need to worry about the education of our children before this procedure that will not necessarily have a measurable impact
So we can create more federal financial ties into our school systems effectively holding us all hostage if we don't educate our children using the "hive mind" method? I'm all for keeping our children safe, but why isn't "911" an effective tool? This is also another symptomatic solution instead of a wholistic one.
We already have phones and 9-1-1... why do we need to spend more taxpayer money on a problem that doesn't exist?
One more government expenditure. DC needs to quit inventing projects to spend money on.
I say no, the money would be put to better use allowing a select number of teachers to carry firearms and paying for the training they would need.
Sounds like a phone. If states want to spend their citizens money on this then they should vote on it independently. We could also just promote qualified teachers to have emt, first responder, or concealed carry themselves. I'd feel safer if my university had that kind of policy.
Almost every child in the US now has a cellphone. I think a better allocation of federal money would be in implementing arts programs at schools.