Michele Gay, founder and executive director of Safe and Sound Schools, is an internationally recognized leader in comprehensive school safety. After the tragic loss of her daughter, Josephine, in the Sandy Hook School shooting, Michele turned her grief into action, dedicating her life’s work to protecting and educating school communities. As the primary author of the Safe and Sound Schools Comprehensive Framework for Safety Planning and Development, she provides practical guidance across six key pillars: emergency management, community engagement, physical safety, mental and behavioral health, school climate, and overall wellness. A trusted subject matter expert, Michele’s voice and inclusive approach foster collaboration among administrators, multidisciplinary teams, school resource officers, parents, and leaders at the local, state, and federal levels.
As a teacher, I connected with the same love of learning that my family – many of whom were educators before me – had cherished for generations. As a mother, I hoped that when I sent my daughters to school, they would feel that same sense of safety and love.
On December 14, 2012, tragedy struck our town, Newtown, Connecticut. My youngest daughter, Josephine Grace Gay, was among the 26 children and educators whose lives were taken at Sandy Hook School that day.
That was my call to action.
As I grieved, I co-founded an organization called Safe and Sound Schools. It was a way to rekindle hope, driven by the belief that we must do better. It was how I chose to take action for our children, our schools, and our communities. It was how I would carry on in Josephine’s memory.
Sadly, as we have seen so many times this school year, our schools continue to experience challenges. We have all seen the headlines reporting on threats, tragic incidents of violence, and a deepening mental health crisis among our youth. This affects every aspect of students’ lives—at home, in classrooms, on playgrounds, and in the digital spaces where so much of their social interaction now takes place.
While technology can be a powerful tool for learning and connection, it has also created vast spaces where students’ anxieties are amplified. Cyberbullying, harmful content, and negative social comparisons deepen feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression.
A Global Youth Culture study found that 60% of young people report experiencing depression, 66% struggle with anxiety, and 35% have had suicidal thoughts. The CDC reports that nearly one in five high school students seriously considered suicide in the past year. According to Mental Health America, 16.39% of youth ages 12-17 experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
These statistics are more than numbers—they represent real lives and real children attempting to navigate a world that is increasingly complex. The mental health crisis is affecting this and future generations, along with the families, communities, and schools in which they live.
This must be our call to action.
Instead of asking “why” after tragedies strike, we must ask: How do we prevent them? How do we ensure our children never have to face such horrific realities?
The answer lies in early identification and intervention. We must provide supports before students reach a crisis point and develop pathways for prevention, particularly for those at risk of turning to violence, whether toward themselves or others.
This requires a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach, inclusive of collaboration among schools, families, communities, policymakers, and students themselves. Schools are uniquely positioned to lead this effort.
Students spend more than six hours a day, nine months out of the year, in school. Educators are often the first to notice changes in behavior, hear concerning remarks, or see subtle signs that something may be wrong. At the same time, our schools are overwhelmed. Chronic understaffing, limited training opportunities, and scarce mental health resources prevent many schools from meeting their students’ growing needs.
So, what can be done to help schools champion these needs?
First, we must address the root causes. Students’ mental health struggles often stem from physical and emotional abuse, bullying, substance abuse, and basic needs like housing and food insecurity. While schools cannot solve these problems alone, they can play a critical role in identifying and supporting students who face them. We must remember that students’ basic needs, including safety, must be secured before they can thrive academically.
Second, in addition to critical physical security measures like metal detectors, cameras, and panic buttons, schools need the resources to support students’ mental health. This includes increasing access to counselors and mental health professionals, while also providing educators with sufficient, evidence-based training to recognize early warning signs. Schools must also foster a culture where students feel safe, valued, and connected—where they know they have trusted adults and peers they can turn to for support.
Third, we must prioritize both physical and digital safety. More than spoken words and observable behaviors, our children now convey their thoughts and emotions through keyword and phrase search, email, text, social media, and other electronic engagement. We need to meet them where they are and leverage technology in ways that proactively supports their safety and wellbeing. While the digital world can pose risks, it can also offer opportunities for early identification, as well as lifelines in the form of mental health resources, online support groups, and educational tools.
Today, technical solutions can monitor digital spaces at scale, flagging signs of violence, self-harm, or other concerning behaviors that may not be immediately visible to educators. These tools offer round-the-clock support, complementing the vigilance of school staff while helping to prevent threats before they escalate.
The Secret Service has found that 74% of school shooting tragedies were predicated by online clues. For the sake of our children, we need to use tools that help us see those clues.
Additionally, the data gathered from these solutions can foster collaboration within the community, raising awareness and enabling broader partnerships to address these issues. Schools, parents, caregivers, and students can work together to establish healthy boundaries around technology use, ensuring students are equipped to navigate the digital world safely.
This is not a crisis we can afford to put off, especially when the solutions are within reach. We must answer this call to action and be proactive about identifying, and stopping, school violence.
We owe it to our children, our students, to do better—today, tomorrow, and every day.