guns and espousing the nra point of view. it's very unpredictable what he will be doing. >> if you would like more information, you can follow olivia's reporting on hills.com and on twitter at olivia _beavers. the house judiciary committee will meet next week to consider those gun bills. we will have it live 10 a.m. eastern on c-span. we will have more coverage from the american local science .ssociation her a portion of today's washington journal. announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: 20 us from baltimore is the cofounder and executive director of safe and sound schools. why did you start this group? guest: i started safe and sound

schools very much in honor of our children. my cofounding partner, alyssa parker, and i both lost daughters in the tragedy at sandy hook school. they are very much a driving force in everything we do, especially at safe and sound schools. they loved school. they left their friends and teachers, the wonderful community it was and is today. important to us to honor the positivity and help others move forward following the tragedy. we realized it was not just us. we were trying to figure out how can we send our surviving kids back to school. we realized it was across the nation that people were fearful about sending their kids back to school, teachers going back to work. host: sorry for the loss of your daughter, josephine. can you talk about surviving ,hat loss and when you decided

ok, i need to start this group, and how you came about that? guest: very incrementally, i guess i would say. i firstling, that pang, noticed in the parking lot the day of the tragedy. i did not yet comprehend what had happened. i did not know yet that i have lost a child that day. i was still waiting for her to come out of the building with her classmates. my middle daughter had evacuated safely and i knew my oldest daughter was on another campus in town. but i remember sitting there and just having this moment, thinking, here we are, all these years after columbine, and i am sitting in the parking lot, realizing that something like that has happened here. the unthinkable has happened here. and we really are not as well prepared as i had thought we were. do you hope to

accomplish with this group? guest: what we do at safe and sound schools is try to source and curate the best resources, programs, and tools. we certainly create a lot of our own as well, in order to engage the whole community, all stakeholders. parents, students, safety professionals, educators, mental health professionals. really get everybody on board with this, and on the same page, working toward the same goal of safety in communities. what we hope to accomplish is ultimately to empower a nation of safer schools, so that folks like us, in the wake of a tragedy or fearful of a tragedy, can get there resources on the tools they need. host: who are you working with? guest: we work with all the folks i just rattled off there. it is a large undertaking torque with so many varied stakeholder

groups, but we really believe fundamentally that that is the way to make positive change in our communities. you know, school safety and where it is today, what it is today, is not what it was when i was a student. it is certainly not what it was when i was a teacher. it is evolving and it is very complex today. or are a lot of issues are schools are facing that are coming in from the outside world. rather than overwhelm people, rather than leave it on one person's shoulders, like the , it isal or the police important we all chip in and work together. host: how much has changed since sandy hook? guest: you know, i think immediately following the tragedy -- we took some time before going out and visiting and listening and learning and speaking, sharing our story in community groups and professional groups. seen over thee years is that the conversation is certainly elevated.

there is a greater general knowledge, even among the public, about the types of things they need to be seen and looking for in their communities, and certainly we have conducted a survey and report for the past two years. same kind of findings in that report that we are seeing anecdotally out in the field. parents are becoming more involved. students are becoming more involved. they are learning what to ask for, what types of things are working in other communities, so they can advocate for those things in their communities as well. host: we want parents and educators to join us for this conversation. what do you think needs to happen, or what is happening in your schools and your communities, keeping students safe? educators, please call in at 202-748-8000.

we are talking with the president of a sandy hook victim and the cofounder of safe schools. report, a 2018 safety and i was interested in -- this is from safe and sound schools people, a survey of "my school has a false sense of security." what did you find there? guest: our server report has real for the past two years a persistent fear, especially among students and parents, that there exists a false sense of security, that folks are looking the other way or putting their head in the sand, not willing to confront some of the issues that are really ultimately undermining the sense of safety in the school, is not the level of preparedness for some type of crisis event. host: in the top three concerns about school safety -- what did you find?

guest: mental health at the top of the list. mental health followed by active shooter and concerns for bullying still persist, coming in at number three. these are three big issues. we found across the board with our stakeholders that these were scoring high. these were coming in as top concerns. host: how do you address these top concerns? guest: you know, i think the survey helps us identify these trends, these commonalities in school communities across and among stakeholder groups across the country. the point of conducting a survey and issuing a report like this is to get conversations like this going nationally, but also at the local level. as we found last year, following our state of school safety survey and report, conversations began at the national level, but also at the local level. lots of our school communities began conducting surveys of their own, targeting specific

questions or concerns or worries that they felt they might be experiencing in their community. that is where we start to see things change, when the conversation opens up, and people are invited to talk about these things rather than hide from them, avoid them. that is when we see people start to push up their sleeves and get to work together. local level, once they saw the survey results and started doing their own, what are some of the actions that local officials started taking? guest: so, one of the things that we saw in this year's survey and report was a trend toward social emotional learning. this is a positive sign, because we advocate for social emotional learning and curriculum and programs in our school communities. but the fact the conversations have risen to the level that students and parents are now using that vernacular -- it's

more of an educator term or a mental health professional term. that shows is that people are becoming more educated and more involved, and they are also recognizing that school safety is not just a matter of locks on doors and alarm systems and security, and involvement with safety and police professionals. ofreally does involve a lot underlying issues, family issues, social issues, mental health issues, of course. and ensuring that our students are coming to school in a culture --imate and all of those things are supported by programs like social emotional learning. to see that stakeholder groups, including parents and students, are beginning to become aware of those programs and advocate for them in their communities is for us a positive finding. host: what do social and emotional learning involve? guest: that is a great question.

if i could give you a nutshell version, it is really advocating for positive interactions, values, positive culture and climate, teaching our students and our staff members and families how to deal with and process emotions, complicated emotions they might have in any given day. so really teaching more positive interactions, and those types of things we believe will have a positive effect on issues we are still seeing today, such as bullying. a parent inis frankfort, kentucky. good morning to you. caller: good morning. you are so beautiful. think you for your work. i am the mother of four and grandmother of seven. when i was growing up, we had the draft. i had an idea about ak-47s. schools,alking about

or we have a problem with churches and theaters and bars, and all these public places. everybody always talks about the second amendment, and i have read the constitution, but nobody speaks of the third amendment. the third amendment was the congress being able to put troops in your home. that is the draft, which we got rid of, mercifully. but i think we should draft ak-47s into the pentagon, where they belong, because people are committing a new form of warfare. ak-47s are being used as warmaking. and if the police need to get an ak-47 from somebody because they could shoot a hundred rounds, or maybe they need to take it off someone who has someone hostage, the nra needs to build a new type of gun that can put people to sleep to take their ak-47s.

-- gunfireichele gay fire ants -- gun violence. the caller brings up the issue of should we have guns in school as part of the protection it should they be banned? these are important conversations. thatusly we know firsthand gun violence has made its way into our school. but it is coming from outside. it is being experienced in other public forums and public places throughout our country. while our organization does not specifically tackle legislative solutions surrounding gun rights or gun restrictions, it is certainly something that many other groups are working on. several of our sandy hook parents are on that in other

organizations as well. in your survey, you have asked if people would like to choose one safety area you would like to see more money allocated to out of your school budget -- when you look at mental health experts, parents, educators, and the community, many of them say that is where money should go for school safety. you talked about putting more mental health experts in schools. who are these people? what role do they play in the school? such a great point. it was a fascinating revelation for me this year reading about the data we were receiving on that particular issue. whereed our stakeholders you want to see the money go. as we talked about, in dealing with a comprehensive approach to school safety, we are not talking about alarm systems and hardware type things. we're also talking about programs, about staffing that

addresses mental and behavioral health. you know, actual, physical health and wellness, culture, climate, and community. those types of things. what we found in the survey when we asked the question to our stakeholders, parents and students rank physical safety as their priority first, number one priority. we had staff really targeting .ental health and both parents and students were ranking social emotional learning as the number two. ,t is an interesting difference that we have the parents and students really focusing on a particular type of safety, physical safety, and we have our educators focusing more on the mental health needs. -- we canr educators hypothesize they are seeing on a day-to-day basis the variety of different mental health issues

and supports that are required to support our students safely through the day and get them home safely, and help them to grow and learn as we are all hoping for. i think that when we talk about the needs of more mental health in schools, for the most part, we are talking about those programs and school-based mental health professionals. those would be school psychologists, school social workers, and school counselors. those are three of the critical roles, and the each comprehensively really serve the mental health needs, the programming needs, and the individual student and staff needs of the community in a way that we know supports safety very well. will go to georgia. amy is a parent. actually, i am a

grandmother and a guardian. i have two girls living with me. one in middle school has had issues with some students or someone claiming or threatening, and in some instances being caught on the premises with a to othersaning harm they are going after. i was going to ask you if you were at all involved with any of the -- if you thought that gun legislation may be have been something that you would be talking about also. but it appears that is not what you are targeting, but more of the maybe mental issues, which i am surprised that the u.s. has so many kids with so many mental issues. i do not see this in other countries, so why is this country so different? if this is the land of weortunity for everyone, and

have a lot more -- you know what i am saying? we have a lot more things going on for our country. why do we have such a huge problem with our kids? it's a great question, and you are right. we do not specifically focus the organization on gun legislation restrictions or any of that side of the issue. but in terms of what we are seeing -- this report reveals as stress management and trauma coping skills -- those are things that our parents and students are identifying as needs for support. we just talked about our school staff noticing really strong needs for mental health support for our children and families. i don't have the answer. i agree with you there is a lot going on today that maybe was not going on when we were kids,

when i was a teacher. the world is a complicated place, and we are certainly finding that people have a need for more and more support, and they are looking to schools to help them find that. host: jay is next, in massachusetts, and educator. what do you teach? caller: good morning. ay.nk you ms. g this program is important. i am actually a retired educator. my concern is i think in the line of the emotional social component which ms. gay alluded to earlier. i wanted to say briefly that i so appreciate her efforts, given the trauma she herself has son.ienced, having lost a it is a very difficult thing. of toxic was that idea

masculinity. in this society, it seems that we as parents and educators have to try to inculcate in our boys that there are other ways of being besides this dominating, weressive masculinity, which see emblazoned across the screen on a daily basis. how do we begin to tackle something which is so fundamental, but is wreaking such havoc? you are pointing back to social emotional learning programming and supports for our families and students. and that -- if we are to try to some of what our , aresters, our young males experiencing, and perhaps even being encouraged to be part of, via tv, video games, and today's culture -- the antidote we see is to provide and to counter that with positive instruction

and positive activities that social emotional learning programs provide. host: bruce in pittsburgh. good morning to you, bruce. caller: good morning. the easiest way would be to gear up on the security in these schools, and only teach education kindergarten to fourth. have them learn the computers. put the computers in the homes, and teach them from the school to they are. we could cut our education bill in half, because we would have computer education. we could monitor it closer. we could take politics out of our school, and with the remaining buildings that we have left that are not occupied by students, we could take half of the education budget and renovate them for the people in the streets that are living there. host: bruce, michele gay is a

former teacher. howdy respond to that? -- how do you respond to that? guest: those are fascinating points and i entertain some of those ideas immediately post-tragedy. we had lost a child and we had to school-age children that wanted to go back to school, which was very surprising to me. but they were adamant about being able to return to school. i was thinking maybe i am going to homeschool them. i am certified. i can do this. there are any number of programs where students can be lurking using a computer at home, as the caller is describing. there are certainly lots of alternatives to sending our kids to the school building and experiencing that school community. but what a loss, you know? to deny our kids the chance to socialize, to make those lifelong friendships, learn the

lessons of getting on with one another, connecting with other people, facing challenge and adversity, and doing it together thatlearned from my kids it was very important to them, even immediately following the tragedy, having lost their younger sibling, that the school friendships, the adult relationships th announcer 1: we are going to go live to eight discussion hosted by the american political science association, live coverage here on c-span. no secret to political nor to the members of congress or the american people