The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
STOP Act to benefit Sandy Hook Promise
NEWTOWN — It is no coincidence the STOP School Violence Act signed by the president on Friday will award $100 million in annual grants to precisely the types of programs that Sandy Hook Promise runs.
The homegrown nonprofit, which has become one of the premier gun violence prevention groups in the country, was instrumental in developing the STOP bill.
“The bill is written to make sure grants are awarded to evidence-based groups that are grassroots, like Sandy Hook Promise,” said Tim Makris, a cofounder and managing director. “There is no other organization in the country that is structured the way we are, with the tools and the infrastructure that we have.”
The STOP legislation, signed into law by President Donald Trump as part of a $1.3 trillion spending bill, will support programs that help schools identify violence before it happens, according to Sen. Chris Murphy, who co-sponsored the bill.
For example, the STOP legislation will fund “anonymous reporting systems” of the type launched Thursday by Sandy Hook Promise. The nationwide tip system allows students to share a concern about a peer’s red-flag behavior with a Florida-based hotline center, which vets the information and when appropriate refers it to police or school administrators.
The anonymous hotline is an extension of Sandy Hook Promise’s signature “Say Something” program, which teaches youths to recognize the signs that a peer is about commit violence and encourages them to tell a trusted adult.
Leaders of the Newtownbased nonprofit were thrilled this week when their legislation was included in the spending bill that was sent to the White House early Friday.
“We have been working for over a year to pass the STOP School Violence Act to give our students and educators proven training to prevent all forms of violence and self-harm in our schools,” said co-founder and managing director Mark Barden, the father of a first-grader who was slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
The STOP act’s passage means the free programs Sandy Hook Promise develops and promotes are eligible for federal funding, and the nonprofit can extend its impact.
“We are a $12 million organization, thanks to the generosity of our donors, but that is not enough to reach the 26 million kids we need to reach with these programs to reduce gun violence,” Makris said. “The STOP act will help us accelerate our launches and extend our programs, and help us to pay more trainers.”
The STOP Act has broad support, not only in Congress but in Newtown, which is home to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry’s 12,000-member trade association.
NSSF on Friday praised the passage of both the STOP act and a law requiring states and federal agencies to fully report criminal and mental health records to the national background check system, known as NICS.
“The legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump is a true achievement to making communities safer while respecting individual rights,” said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president for government and public affairs and general counsel, in a prepared statement.
The STOP Act’s passage came one day before Saturday’s nationwide March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C., and across the country. The youth-led march was organized by survivors of the Valentine’s Day shooting of 17 students and staff at a Florida high school — America’s deadliest school shooting since the shooting of 26 firstgraders and educators at Sandy Hook.
Barden said Sandy Hook Promise programs are designed to exploit the fact that 80 percent of school shooters told their plans to someone before the crime.
Not only have the nonprofit’s programs prevented suicides and mass shootings, he said, but they are reducing chronic isolation and bullying, which can be linked to school–based violence.
“Broadview Middle School in Danbury said their bullying went down to practically zero after we implemented our ‘Start With Hello’ program,” Barden said of a Sandy Hook Promise initiative designed to reduce chronic isolation. “Can you imagine the success we could have if we could get these programs into every school in the country?”