The Ewing Public School District will receive $191,033 from a bill passed last month and signed by Governor Phil Murphy appropriating a total of $5.15 million from the Securing Our Children’s Future Bond Act to provide grants for school security projects in New Jersey school districts.
The funding will be allocated to the installation of silent panic alarms to alert law enforcement during an emergency as required by Alyssa’s Law, as well as other school security upgrades.
“The safety and well-being of students and educators across our state is one of our top priorities. By investing in school security, we are also investing in healthy and safe learning environments,” said Murphy. “This funding will help many schools make necessary security enhancements to their facilities.”
“We share a common goal in New Jersey of ensuring our students and staff are in safe and secure learning environments,” said Dr. Angelica Allen-McMillan, acting commissioner of education. “The funding that is being announced today is one important piece that helps New Jersey continue to achieve that goal.”
Primary sponsors of the legislation include assembly members Roy Freiman, Angela V. McKnight, and Joe Danielsen and Senator Paul A. Sarlo.
“Equipping our schools with panic alarms will help first responders come to the aid of students and staff more quickly in the event of an emergency,” said Freiman, McKnight and Danielsen in a joint statement. “It’s sad that measures such as this are necessary. However, in these troubling times this is a prudent action to protect the well-being of our children.”
“This is an investment in the safety of school children and educators in schools across the state,” said Senator Sarlo. “The ‘panic alarms’ provide a level of silent security that we hope is never needed but is always there. State funds will allow schools to install the system.”
Some of the upgrades that funding will go towards would be for installing silent panic alarms to alert law enforcement during an emergency, as is required by Alyssa’s Law, which Murphy signed in 2019.
The law was named after Alyssa Alhadeff, a 14-year-old former resident of Woodcliff Lake who was killed in a school shooting along with 16 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
Ewing High School (Photo by Bill Sanservino.),
