Moskowitz Continues to Lead on School Safety with Two More Bipartisan Bills to Protect Florida Students, Teachers, and Schools
WASHINGTON, DC — Congressman Jared Moskowitz (D-FL-23) joined Congressmen Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-05), Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23), and Don Davis (D-NC-01) to reintroduce bipartisan legislation to double down on critical safety tools in Florida schools. Their bipartisan Alyssa’s Legacy Youth in Schools Safety Alert (ALYSSA) Act would require silent panic alarms in all schools to immediately alert law enforcement of an active shooter situation, and their bipartisan Strengthening Our Schools (SOS) Act would increase investments in School Resource Officers to ensure more schools have first responders on campus in the event of a critical incident.
“Congress has to use every tool we can to ensure schools have the resources to respond to emergency situations, and the ALYSSA Act and SOS Act I filed with Congressman Gottheimer are commonsense solutions to build those out,” said Congressman Moskowitz. “By improving emergency notification systems and the availability of first responders at Florida schools, Congress can take necessary action with this bill to help protect our students, teachers, and families.”
“With these bipartisan bills, we’re turning Alyssa’s memory and the pain her family and friends carry each day into action. Both the ALYSSA Act and the SOS Act will help protect students in the one public place they should feel safest: their schools,” said Congressman Gottheimer. “Together, with silent alarms in every school directly connected to local law enforcement agencies and with School Resource Officers at more schools around the country, we are taking concrete steps to help keep students and faculty safe from gun violence and active situations. I will never stop fighting to protect children across the nation from senseless school shootings and acts of gun violence.”
“We cannot in good conscience stand by while our children fear for their lives in the classroom. By finding common ground through requiring panic alarms in schools and investing in school resource officers, we are sending a strong and clear message that we must keep our kids safe,” said Congressman Davis.
The ALYSSA Act is named in memory of 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff, a young Floridian who was senselessly killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
“I am so excited that the ALYSSA Act has been filed again. I strongly encourage swift action to pass the ALYSSA Act nationally so that every school can have a panic button as a standard level of safety protection. Our children deserve immediate access to emergency response—there is no time to wait when lives are on the line,” said Lori Alhadeff, Alyssa Alhadeff’s mother, a member of the Broward County School Board, and President of Make Our Schools Safe.
Alongside the ALYSSA Act and the SOS Act, Moskowitz has already introduced three other commonsense school safety bills this Congress. He is leading the bipartisan Measures for Safer School Districts (MSD) Act to improve emergency notification systems and bolster interior and exterior doors at schools; the bipartisan Single Application for School Safety (SASS) Act to streamline the federal grant application process for school safety funding; and the bipartisan EAGLES Act to establish a national program on targeted violence prevention at schools. All bills are commonsense, bipartisan measures to ensure schools are better prepared in the case of emergency and to help prevent emergencies from happening in the first place.
Since coming to Congress, Moskowitz has rallied colleagues to support school safety and gun violence prevention. He joined Parkland family members to lead Congressional colleges, former Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, and former Vice President Kamala Harris on tours of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School before its June 2014 demolition, and he was recently selected to join the House Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of gun violence prevention.