By Cyrus Ready-Campbell, VTDigger
Gov. Phil Scott signed a proclamation Friday, Sept. 1, declaring September to be School Safety Month in Vermont.
Scott and state education and safety officials gathered at the Statehouse to praise the work done behind the scenes to keep schools and children safe and to commit to a safe year ahead.
Rob Evans, the school safety liaison for the Agency of Education, said educators worked over the summer to develop strategies for evaluating and managing threats to schools, especially those sent over the internet like in Essex and South Burlington last school year.
Scott said the many people who help protect kids at school — including teachers, principals, school nurses, and police and fire chiefs — often go unsung for that part of their jobs, because they “prevent the events for which they would be called upon to respond.”
“It isn’t unlike the CIA, in some ways,” Scott said. “Their greatest successes are the ones we never hear about.”
Scott noted that September is also National Preparedness Month, and that the lighting response time of Vermont emergency responders dispatched to help with flooding in Houston serves as reminder of the value of preparedness more broadly.
