CHARLESTON, W.Va. — There has been a lot of positive change in the public school system since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, but a mother of one of the victims recently told West Virginia school officials more needs to be done to protect kids in the classroom.
Michele Gay
Michele Gay has been working to turn tragedy into an opportunity for change since the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012. Her youngest daughter, 7-year-old Josephine “Joey” Gay, was among the 20 students who were killed in the gunfire. Six adult staff members also died.
“For us, it was kind of a choice to not stay in the horrible last minutes of her life, but to be much more focused on her, on her spirit and creating a legacy,” Gay told MetroNews Friday at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center before she gave the keynote address at the 2023 West Virginia School Safety Conference.
Gay is the executive director and co-founder of Safe and Sound Schools. The organization was formed by Gay and another Sandy Hook parent and friend of the family, Alissa Parker, who also lost her 6-year-old daughter Emilie. The non-profit offers education and training when it comes to school crisis response efforts.
The goal is to is rally everyone together to protect kids, Gay said.
“Really being able to enable the teachers to talk with the cops, to talk with the school psychologists, to talk with the social workers, the superintendents, the parents, the students, the custodians and on and on because we believe that it really takes all-hands-on-deck to really do it right,” she said.
Joey was killed just three days after her 7th birthday. She was non-verbal yet touched the lives of so many people.
“She was probably most remembered for the fact that she was non-verbal. She was an autistic child. All of her precious little peers and classmates had to work a little harder to get to know her and darn it if they didn’t. They just loved her,” Gay said.
Gay said it’s been inspiring to see a lot of progress over the last 11 years since Sandy Hook, but challenges still remain. There have been security upgrades at school buildings, increased response efforts from law enforcement and an increase in mental health services.
“People that didn’t used to talk together, that used to argue about well, no we don’t need more SROs (school resource officers), we need more school counselors,” she said. “What we’ve been saying all along is no, you need more of both.”
Gay has channeled her work as an advocate for improving school safety by providing more resources to communities, particularly those that are at a disadvantage. She said Newtown, Connecticut is a small town just like many rural areas of West Virginia where resources are limited.
“There might not always be as many tangible resources as we would like to do the work that we have to do here for schools and communities, but this state in particular, these communities are really rich in human resources. Everybody here loves kids. Everybody here loves their community and if we can galvanize people around that, there’s nothing we can’t do,” Gay said.
Last week’s two-day conference was hosted by the Mountain State Educational Services Cooperative.
2023-10-29 21:00:35
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