00:05

Zahra Massicote

Hi, everyone. My name is Zahra, and this is Tech in EdTech. In this podcast, we discuss technology that powers education and improves learning for all. Welcome to today's episode, where we're going to be shining the spotlight on student safety, a topic that's top of mind for administrators, educators, and parents alike. Our guest for today is Philip Selton, CEO of Lockdown Experts. As a law enforcement executive with the FBI, Phil has held leadership positions focused on counterterrorism and incident response. His extensive background in counterterrorism, risk assessment, and emergency planning affords him a unique understanding of security protocols and emergency response strategies. Welcome to the show, Phil. Thank you so much for joining us today.

00:47.44

Phil

Well, Zara, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today about a subject that I feel very passionate about. And that's about how we make schools safer for our children. So this hopefully will be an interesting discussion, and I look forward to answering some of your questions.

01:02

Zahra Massicote

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. So, given this extensive background, I'm super curious, and I think our listeners would be really interested to understand what led you into this important work of student safety.

01:14

Phil

Well, I mean, I think it's, you know, I share the concern of many people, first of all, that are watching the rising number of violent incidents in schools, and that's been going on, unfortunately, for a long period of time. And when I was in the FBI, I had the misfortune of having to watch video of what happened during some of these active-shooter situations. And you know that type of thing stays with you. And you wanna figure out what we can do to make schools safer, what could we do to make students safer.

1:42

Phil

And frankly, some of this stuff would apply outside of schools, but for today, we're just talking about schools. So that's kind of how i came ah came into this field.

1:51

Zahra Massicote

Great. Yeah, thank you for that. And yeah, someone with your background, I'm sure it's much appreciated in a lot of the school systems that you work with. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about Lockdown Experts and what key problem or gap that you're trying to solve at schools.

02:09

Phil

Sure, um, as I, as we talked about before, I was with the FBI and I had a senior role in working on counterterrorism cases, and I alluded to the fact that I unfortunately had to watch videos showing what happened in schools and other violent incidents, and watching people get killed. And the reason for that was, at the time we would try to figure out if a foreign terrorist organization was involved in any of these incidents, which was my main role. And we would initially review the videos and other evidence that came in. And in many cases, it turned out that it didn't involve a foreign terrorist organization, but I still unfortunately had to look at these things and think continually about what could have been done differently. So Lockdown Experts is a company, and I think we're going to probably talk a little bit more about it, but is a company that was founded in order to try to save lives, to learn from what happened in the past, both from survivors of active shooter incidents, as well as to allow first responders to be able to get to the scene faster, to be able to save lives and to take advantage of technology that is is readily available. And I think we're going to be talking a little about fire alarms, but, you know, we're used to using technology to save lives, and everybody kind of takes it for granted because fire alarms and systems that suppress fires have been around for 70, 80 or more years and they actually work. And we're used to those. So the question is, why can't we do something similar for active shooter situations?

3:40

Zahra Massicote

Right, exactly. Yeah, that was one of the questions I had was a lot of us, right, grew up with these fire drills. You heard an alarm, you lined up quietly, you walked outside to your designated spot, but it was a little bit more routine. Like, I feel like I remember it being a great break from class rather than thinking about it as an emergency. But today's is obviously a very different situation, and even my own experience recently hit home. My daughter, who's not even in grade school yet, attends a daycare in an elementary school. And a few weeks ago, they had their first lockdown drill, and she came home. She said, you know, they played a game where they hid under a teacher's guest desk, and that everyone was really brave. They got a lollipop.

It was both heartbreaking and eye-opening to hear this, you know, from a two-year-old. So yeah, I mean, you know all that to get to how these lockdown situations are so much more different. It's such a different level of decision-making and coordination than a fire drill. So yeah, maybe you can speak a little bit more to how the lockdown AL system supports school leaders and staff to make this these right to these decisions quickly during a crisis.

4:52

Phil

Yeah, and i think going back to what you were alluding to earlier, and we we briefly talked about fire alarms, but I think, you know, we kind of take for granted that, and and you and I have probably been through the same thing, and all the are the professionals that work schools right now, as we grew up, we got used to, you'd have a fire drill, depending on what the school was, maybe once a month, maybe once a quarter, or whatever the regulation of the school was, that we learned that the fire alarm would go off, we were taught to don't panic, just stand up, calmly walk out the door, walk down the stairs, don't run, and go to a predetermined assembly area.

5:27
Zahra Massicote

Mm-hmm.

5:28

Phil

And the reason why we started doing that was that we learned that that's how you save lives, that between fire alarms and sprinkler systems, smoke detectors, which are newer, thermal detectors, maybe. We have all these advanced systems now that save lives in the event of a fire. And if you look back, what's interesting if you look back, you realize that there really haven't been, and I think it's been in the 1950s was the last time it a significant number of people were killed in a fire in a school. And the reason is that we have these technologies that have been around for a long time, and they actually work. So, you know, so our students and our society are used to using technology, of course, to try to save lives. So, per your point, you know, the evolution is, okay, what are we doing about active shooter situations that they keep happening?

They're clearly killing a lot more people, unfortunately, than fires are when we look at schools. So what what is the right answer going to be? And I think that's what you're talking about like what kind of technology can we use?

6:25

Zahra Massicote

Yeah, absolutely. You know, typically, we talk in terms of technology, you know usually in this podcast and others, we talk about edtech in the context of learning outcomes, but it's also about empowering educators So, yeah, how are you seeing the role in technology play in enhancing school safety and emergency preparedness? You know, be curious as far as how this approach with using technology has adapted with leaders in school districts and and maybe you have a more recent example of it making an impact.

6:58

Phil

Well, I think that we just, you know, we have to accept the fact that unfortunately we are going to need to start spending money, and every school needs to have some technology, and Obviously, some it's dependent on what the budget the school is, but in order to be able to save lives in active-sure situations, those can take many different forms. And some of them are pretty obvious, like, you know, controlling access points and trying to keep doors locked and keep people coming in through side doors.

07:23

Zahra Massicote

Mm-hmm.

07:24

Phil

But you the the answer, I think, is that we need to really think through as school administrators spend money, what's the right way to spend money, and what's the potential outcome of what I'm accomplishing? So, for example, ah, you know, there's a lot of focus on metal detectors. And of course, metal detectors are used in many government buildings and other important buildings to for safety to try to keep people out with guns or other weapons. But we also have to understand the potential limitations of those if we think those are the only line of defense, because You have to make sure you have complete control of all the access points, which in a school is very difficult to do to prevent someone come in through a door where there isn't a metal detector. And, you know, another thing to think about, you know, I don't know if you've ever thought about this before, but what happens when someone does come in with a gun that gets picked up by a metal detector? Are the personnel at that location specifically going to be prepared to deal with that situation? And then once again, even if we do have all those items in place, all the appropriate security measures in place, you still have to assume that somebody might get in and bypass a metal detector or whatever other security measures you put in. There's all kinds of other ways to potentially detect guns. Maybe you're searching people as they come in or whatever it might be, or you might have things in a school, like there are other technology events, but what do you do when someone actually gets through with a gun, and what are your options? And that gets back to you know, just want to revisit a fire alarm again, you could have the most advanced building that has the most advanced fire suppression systems, thermal detectors, smoke detectors, um, doors are closed automatically, all kinds of other advanced tech, technology to include making sure that the walls are fireproof, so they will withstand a certain amount of fire for a period of time to save lives. But you still always are required by code to have a fire alarm because that is the backup that everybody knows that they can fall back on.

9:27

Phil

So as we look at what type of technology we're putting in schools, I think we have to really take a step back and just make sure that are they really foolproof and really nothing is completely foolproof, but some technologies are better than other technologies. That gets back to, you know, are we really like our alarm, which we could talk a little bit about. I know we don't want to spend the whole time talking about the lockdown alarm, but there are there's a lot of benefits to it. And really nothing is completely foolproof, but some technologies are better than other technologies. So as we discuss the technology. That we want to use related to active shooter situations. Uh, we, we've already alluded to fire alarms and however he knows how to use them and how they're highly reliable.But statistically we know that fires are, are just not a threat in schools anymore, and they haven't been a threat in a long time. It's also worth pointing out or emphasizing again that fire alarms create exactly the wrong reaction.

The, the. Go to a predetermined assembly area, and we're also notifying the fire department that there's a potential fire within the building. We want an active shooter alarm to do something very different, which is tell people to either lock their doors or run as fast as they can out of the school. In addition, we want to notify the police, not the fire department, that there's an active shooter situation, and we want tell the police where the alarm was activated so they can respond there as quickly as possible and have an idea of where the shooting occurred.

Finally, we wanna provide a lot of situational awareness about what's going on in the building so the police can respond more effectively. And all these things are not done by a fire alarm. So we really do need to look at upgrading our technologies to address what is really the larger threat facing our students.

11:01

Zahra Massicote

Yeah, I mean, you bring up a lot of really good points, and there's so many different challenges and things that administrators have to think about. And, you know, administrators aren't innately like safety experts, which is, you know, why they consult with someone like you to help them with this preparedness. But I imagine it can be such an overwhelming decision. You know, do we go with metal detectors? Do we, you know, do we, what are these certain safety call um protocols that we should be making? And also just thinking about all these worst-case scenarios. You know, you just talked us through like, well, what if this happens? What if this happens? There's so many different decision trees that administrators have to make with everything they're doing. So, like, what would you say to administrators to help them plan in a practical way about some of these equipment needs and policies and drills, without it becoming this overwhelming thing? And, you know, you brought up some of the challenges like budget. It's a different, you know, we wouldn't want administrators just to have budget challenges to to try and and make their school as safe as possible.

12:00

Phil

Well, I mean, I think, first of all, some of it's just taking a step back before technology. Some of it has to do with making sure and and hopefully most schools have this by now. But unfortunately, there are there are instances where perhaps it hasn't been done as effectively as could be. But every school and every school district needs to have ah a good SOP in place, a standard operating procedure. So, everybody knows here's what happens when an active shooter situation occurs. And that includes the administration of the school system. It's obviously that's got to be coordinated with the police department. And it should be a predetermined set of things that occur. And If you don't have one in place, you probably need to have an expert come in and review that. And that expert, by the way, could be a consultant, could be somebody like me, could be a local police department, maybe perfectly capable of handling that SOP review, but that needs to be locked down. So that's a bad word to use because it's named after my company. I apologize. But into that SOP needs to be set up well, and because that in no matter what system you have in place, what technology you're using, you need to make sure that you understand what the protocol is. And then, of course, the second important thing, which is kind of interrelated to the SOP, is there has to be training. So everybody, from the administration to the students, needs to be trained on here's what happens when there's an active shooter situation. I think that's becoming more prevalent throughout school systems because they're recognizing this is a significant threat. But it's worth checking, are the SOPs correct? And is what we're teaching students correct? And you know that that that's something that's worthy of definitely some analysis, but in our, you know, our thought has changed a little bit as time has gone by. There used to be a period in time where we would say, just lock the doors. And there, by the way, I want to emphasize that point there is a lot of benefit to locking a door in the sense that in almost every school shooting, and I believe 100% of school shootings actually, no one's ever broken down a door because if the door is locked, people walk through, the the the shooter is walking around and he's he or she is just gonna go on to the next door because that's the mentality that they're in. So, locking doors has some merit. But conversely, if you can get out of the building, and if you see a clear path, then we you need to run out of the building as fast as possible. And that's in most training. So you know, our thoughts about what we need to do have evolved over time. But then the next step is to make sure that our technology, whatever technology we have, is integrated into the standard operating procedure, is integrated into our training, of course, for the students, and is also integrated with the first responders so that it works effectively. The first responders know what to expect when they get to a school, and they're able to more effectively save lives. So what we know about school shootings and other active shooter situations outside of schools are unfortunately, in some instances, some people may get killed because they happen to be standing right next to the shooter. But the way to save lives is first of all, to give your the individuals, the students, more time to try to survive that sort of great space or to lock doors between the student and the shooter.

15:03

Phil

And of course, to have first responders know where the shooter is and respond more effectively and get there faster, because that's what's going to save lives in the end, or those two events. So to pivot a little, just talking a little about the alarm that Lockdown Experts is building, which we're proud of the fact that we have 22 patents around it, and we actually have another patent pending. But basically, the concept is that we know fire alarms work.

Fire alarms, as we've talked about already, have a proven history of saving lives, and you know our society is also very used to them.

So our alarm know is an oversimplification is simply building a fire alarm for active shooter situations. And that is critical because if, as we talked about, there are many different technology things that have that could be put in place, and some of them add value. Some of them, I think, may be a little debatable as to whether they're actually worth the amount of money we're spending to try to save lives. But in the end, we have to be worried about that incident where somebody gets a gun into a school and starts shooting. And what do we know is an ultimate, relatively simplistic backup? But that's the ability to for somebody who sees a gun, or somebody who sees someone shooting, presses a button, and the alarm goes off, and everybody in the building knows that they should lock down or run out of the building. And the police know that there's an active shooter situation occurring at that building, and they can respond to the appropriate place within the building as fast as possible. I mean, these are all critical things to saving lives. And that, at the core, is what Lockdown Experts is working on. Hope that was a long answer to the question.

16:38

Zahra Massicote

No, I mean, really, and I kind of want to repeat some of that back to you just to kind of reinforce some of this so that I'm coming away with the right outcomes here and and our listeners are here too. So kind of the first steps in your analysis would be, you know, making sure that the school system or the district has an SOP, a standard operating procedure in place. So work with them on just making sure all the protocols, and you would think that's pretty standard, but I imagine there's a lots of different forms of it at this point. Um, so nailing down the standard operating procedures, making sure once you have that in place, having the training for all admin, staff, students, so they know what to do in every situation. And then the technology that kind of enhances all of these things and integrated that into their system, making sure first responders know what to do and kind of, um, making it as efficient, I guess, as possible, right?

17:39

Phil

Yes, exactly. And then having that, an understanding that wouldn’t no matter what the technology is, unfortunately, there is a chance that you're going to have an actual shooting occurring. So what layering, making sure you need the appropriate technology to handle that situation also, which is kind of part of what we've already talked about.

17:58

Zahra Massicote

And so, as far as the technology adoption, like what are some of the challenges or hesitations that you find with leaders when they're making these kinds of decisions?

18:10

Phil

Well, you know, that's a good question. That's a really good question. And I do understand the, the issues that people have in making these selections, and these are real issues that, you know, that I, that I think maybe some, some people out in the public might not understand, but, you know, um, understanding the, the things that educators and other decisions make.

I mean, how much money do I have within my budget? Uh, how much money can I get in the additional funding I need to and perhaps the technologies that I want to put in place we simply can't afford. And, you know, we might have to take some shortcuts. Shortcuts is kind of a harsh word. We don't wanna take a shortcut. We might save people's lives, but we have to be realistic that perhaps there's only a finite amount of funding available and I can only afford, uh, this particular technology.

And that's just, ah, you know, unfortunately, that's a reality of life, and the reality that people that work in the government, as you know, as mentioned, I was in the FBI. And I also understand funding issues and we have to live within our budget. So that's something that's complicated.

And then, of course, you have the additional complications of dealing with your constituents, your constituents being the parents and the students, and you have as you get technology, they have to accept the technology you're getting. Can you get them to believe that you're doing the right thing, which your audience probably knows and understands more about that aspect than I do, but you know, just understand that that is a real concern. and And you know lastly, If you're running a large school district, it's kind of hard to incrementally, i would imagine, add technology to different schools and and to kind of test them out and see how they work because you're facing pressure from other parents in other schools are going to want to know if you're putting it in one school, well how come you're not putting at the other schools? And that, of course, compounds your budget concerns because you're if you have a technology, they're expected to be deployed across the entire school district, I would imagine, relatively quickly.

So that was kind of a long-winded answer. And I guess I would add one more point, of course, is you have to you as a school administrator or the person responsible for this may have to sort your way through numerous technologies and decide really which ones which are the ones, even if I have the budget, which are the ones that I think I should buy. And, you know, I think that part of the way to so to answer that is if you just do an analysis of previous shootings, you can find out.

I don't want to call out this context, you know specific technologies that that I'm opposed to because they they could be competing companies and and that may not come out right. But you can research and find out, well, in a particular, that that particular instance has never happened in the school shooting. So why would I add that particular technology to my school?

Whereas in every school shooting, you know something else has happened. So I think you we can make a rational decision as to what the the best way to proceed. Getting the constraints, whatever constraints we may have within our budget

20:56

Zahra Massicote

And do you find that when you're talking to school leaders, they're informed with these things? Or is that part of your process is informing in that consulting role?

21:05

Phil

Well I think it really cuts both ways i mean clearly we you know we've uh some of the heads of some school districts that we interact with have hired very experienced law enforcement or other professionals that have a fair amount of knowledge this area and that discussion is one type of discussion and they still were you know are happy to have us come in and help review their SOP and help review their either education and just kind of talk through what the technologies are.

In other school districts, frankly, they're there just ah there isn't that much expertise, and they're listening to different people, giving them different recommendations and they're under pressure from their parents. So it's it's a wide variety of of knowledge.

But once again, I think in the end, we, you know, we can fall back and look at, well, what happened in previous incidents and why would this technology work versus that technology? And I think that's if I was an administrator, I would I would absolutely recommend you consult with somebody who clearly has some expertise in this area.

But you're going to navigate the salespeople who are just trying to, frankly, unfortunately, make money off of this. And you have to figure out who really has the knowledge. But the fallback, once again, is to look at history and see, well, what has history taught us and why is this specific technology that sounds, perhaps it sounds like a really groundbreaking new technology.

But if you think through it, well, wait a minute, that doesn't really seem to be something that would have helped in previous incidents. So why would I put that into my school? it's there's no simple answer to that question, but I hope that helps.

22:38

Zahra Massicote

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I don't envy the school administrators that have to make some of these decisions. There's a lot that weighs into it. And unfortunately, budget is always a concern with school districts and what they can do and where they have to move things around. So making the right to you know decision for their students and the consist constituents and their community.

You know, I think you know I live in it and everyone thinks it's you know not going to happen to their nice town or whatever, right, you know I live in a very small town and just to think about something like put in like you were saying, like metal detectors, like there's so many different scenarios. But like, my first question is like, do we think our communities’ unsafe? Are students trying to bring in guns? Like, why are we putting in a metal detector? I mean, I think that there's probably so many questions that come up from parents in the community when these decisions are made. And it's a tricky thing to navigate.

23:29

Phil

Right, and along those lines, I think you're absolutely right. And the counterpoint to that, or I don't know about counterpoint, but the opposite is sometimes parents will say, say well, just do this and because this is going to make our school safer. For example, just put a metal detector in.

And you you as the administrator, and your experts need to assess, well, is that really the best answer and the best use of my funds? And in some cases, maybe it would be. But do we have the right personnel to staff that metal detector? And once again, I think we may have discussed this earlier, but what happens when someone comes into school with a gun and they get detected at a metal detector? Well, do we have the right people to handle that situation at that point? So it's not like there's ah an easy answer.

And I'm going to do a quick digress here slightly to talk about something that I didn't get into earlier. 

I don't want to break the flow. I think we have a good flow going here. But what I avoided saying from a technology standpoint is, so there are companies that make, and I don't know that it's in the interest of, you know, trying to sell lockdown that we want to, um, that I want to single out potential competitors, but there's companies that are selling the schools technologies is that either enhance door locks and or reinforce doors so you can't break doors down. That's like to be the most obvious one. Why are you selling that to schools? Because no one in has ever broken down a door in an active shooter situation.

Now, if you're trying to sell to a corporate headquarters and say, well, we need to reinforce the CEO's door because someone might be coming after him, that makes sense. But in a school, it makes absolutely no sense.

24:44

Zahra Massicote

It's super interesting. And just a part of just like people being informed and not on, and, you know, understanding the actual reasons behind certain things, or just like something may sound, well, what, yeah, we need that. Like, that sounds really good. Why wouldn't we have something like that? But, you know, then you go back and look like that's not really something that's gonna necessarily help make you safer because that hasn't been in the history of what's happened in school shootings previously. So I think it's a really good point.

25:11

Phil

But that gets back to so but you know pivoting and this is why do you know i'm proud of the solution that we developed which is a active shooter alarm that runs like a fire alarm and what's so important about it it's got to work 100 of the time it's got to work if the power goes out if the schools IT system goes down if the wi-fi goes down kind of like a fire alarm it needs to work 100 percent of the time and and our the system we built does that and so part of the the importance of that is whatever technology you put in, as we've kind of been talking about through our discussion today, might fail. Hopefully it will work, but there's a reasonable chance that somebody might get through with a metal detector or for that matter, maybe somebody gets caught at the metal detector and unfortunately shoots their way through or maybe they come in through a side exit or who knows any and and maybe they've hidden a gun somehow it came in through some other way so what happens when that happens and that's why the backup is we need to have some type of active shooter alarm within your school just like as we've talked about before you need to have a fire alarm.

26:12

Zahra Massicote

Right, like that's why you have an SOP. So in case this, you know, these are the protocols and what happens next if this doesn't work or this, like, you know, there's, cause there's so many different scenarios that could happen and being prepared.

So then, given all this, Phil, if we look ahead at what innovations or new approaches we see on the horizon for safety in schools, are there emerging technologies or practices, or changes in school design that you're excited about? Excited, maybe, is a tough word to use in this, I think.

You'd prefer like your technology never has to be used, and that would be a successful, successful business. But anything that you can think of that, in the next few years, as far as new technologies or AI being, something that we could tap into here.

26:59

Phil

Well, I think first of all, just, you know, as we start looking into the future as to how we design our schools and and and in many schools right now, it's understanding that, okay, access control is an issue.

We need to have better access controls to how we get into schools. We need to understand, though, that ah if the best access control doesn't really work, if someone opens up a side door and lets somebody else in, or for that matter, if they're trying to sneak in because they're late and someone lets them in that way.

So, just accounting, building technology that allows us to identify when that door is open, and what things we can do about it faster. But absolutely, AI is potentially exciting development because if you think about yeah, everybody, it's a tough topic because privacy concerns kind of kick in. But if we could could know what was going on with the school and perhaps sense that, okay, for some reason, 20 people in this one area of a school started running quickly, which we can have the technology to do that, we might know something serious is going on or for that matter. You know, five people react in this one area, you might recognize that there's a fight going on, but if 100 people start running, you might know there's something very serious going on in this area. So, you think understanding technology, things like facial recognition, cameras, I mean, all these things add value. We just have to make sure, of course, we respect the privacy concerns of students and other individuals within the school; it's kind of a tough balancing act. And the law enforcement person in me always wants to push technology to the limit to try to save lives. But I clearly respect, you know, as the concerns of people who also want to maintain privacy issues. So it's kind of a fine line there, I think.

28:38

Zahra Massicote

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you bring up some really interesting points on the use cases of AI, you know, and but of course, privacy is a huge thing with any edtech or technology we implement, making sure students' students data and all those things are accounted for. But I'm sure administrators also continue to think of like, okay, these are great technologies, but you know, what's the additional costs and things like that? And where can we kind of work together to come up with these solutions? And maybe there's a cooperative approach in different districts or states that could work together on this.

29:10

Phil

Yeah, exactly. And it's a balancing act. I don't envy the school administrators that have to make these tough decisions. But, you know, but once again, balancing between budgets, between privacy concerns, between safety concerns, between parents, it's a tough, tough act that they have to, a tough line that they have to walk.

29:28

Zahra Massicote

Absolutely. And so finally, you did touch on some of this already, but for the school leaders listening, if you could leave them with one actionable step to improve students' safety in their schools right now, what would that be?

Is there anything, and is there any practical first step or change that they could implement after listening to our conversation today?

29:47

Phil

Well, yes, I mean, I hope and I hope that they realize that really that unfortunately, this is the most significant threat that they faced for the safety of their students. It's no longer fires because fires have been, know, technologies have increased to the point that we don't really have to worry as much about fires. It's not to say we should just ignore that, but, you know, we need to really focus on that. So first thing would be to take one step, whatever it may be, to push yourself forward and take some action about that. And it might very well be as simple as taking a look at your SOP and then taking a look at your training and identifying what in your SOP, if anything, needs to be changed. And then based on that review of the SOP, you may realize, OK, there's some particular technology that we can add that are within the amount of within our funding restrictions and we can afford to go ahead with that now. But, you know, i really don't think that you should wait.

I think we need to move ahead now If you and it does, you know, frankly, it doesn't really matter whether you're in a high crime area or a low crime area. Unfortunately, as I'm sure most of our administrators are aware of, ah these school shootings occur in many different places to include areas where there you wouldn't expect there ever be a school shooting that could be in a relatively remote area with a relatively small number of students or they could be in schools in major urban areas so nobody it just like nobody is safe from a fire a fire could happen at anywhere and we've learned that and we put systems in place while a shooting can happen anywhere and it doesn't uh doesn't have anything to do with what part of the United States you're in or what your school district looks like or what the crime is in that area. It's still a concern that everybody has to be worried about. And you really don't want to look back and say, oh, I wish I had done this. I had the capability to do it.

31:36

Phil

So it's a tough situation. You know, my hat's off to people who need to make these difficult decisions and figure out, ah, how can I most effectively move forward given whatever constraints I'm operating under. You know, one step that you can take. And I do think that reviewing your standard operating procedures, reviewing your training, identifying whatever gaps there might be, and then from a but ah from funding standpoint, figure out what it is that I can do.

But I strongly recommend that you, if you haven't done anything, that you make sure you at least do something because you can't assume that you're going to be safe.

32:12

Zahra Massicote

Yeah, absolutely. It's important, fortunate reality that we're living in today. And, you know, just listening to folks at conferences and things I go to, all administrators, I hear the number one thing and top concern is student safety and student health, and well-being. So I appreciate all the work that you do, Phil, at Lockdown Experts. And this is really great, informative conversation today. So, thank you so much for your time.

Any final thoughts that you wanted to share?

32:46

Phil

No, I appreciate you giving me the time to talk today. And I think the last thought I would just say is that there is no one answer, unfortunately, for this problem. So if anyone comes and tries to tell you that, you need to be very suspicious of it. No matter what you do, there is going to be, ah we you need to have multiple levels of concern. protection and to consider the fact that whatever I do, something bad might happen, and we need to have procedures in place for when that does happen, if it happens. 

33:19

Zahra Massicote

Well, appreciate it. Phil, huge thank you for the insights you shared with us today. Obviously, a super important topic. And for those of you who want to know more, I encourage you to check out the Lockdown Experts website. They’re doing truly meaningful work in school safety. And a big thanks to everyone for tuning in today.