The National Coalition for Safe Schools, which National Life has helped found and guide in its first year, elected a board and established its strategic plan this week.
A core planning group from the coalition spent the better of the week camped out in a conference room on the Addison campus planning and strategizing.
The coalition has been organized in an ad hoc way up to now, with a great deal of strategic guidance offered by National Life and one of our consultants.
National Life offered to host a retreat to help the coalition plot its future and create a plan for its long term sustainability.
A dozen people spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Big Tex conference room discussing issues big and small.
With every session, the commitment to empowering teachers to find ways to make their classrooms and their students safe was reinforced.
The coalition is in the process of incorporating, with a longer-term goal of creating a nonprofit.
A board was elected to keep that initiative moving forward. National Life will have two seats on the initial nine-member board, which is primarily comprised of teacher leaders who have been working on this issue.
A strategic plan for the next year was drawn up for the board to consider and begin to adopt in coming months. The hope is that enough money can be raised to hire an executive director who can be in charge of the day-to-day operations of the coalition.
Tentative plans have also been drawn up to sponsor innovative programs in schools that are designed to make schools safer by tackling some of the root causes that lead to violence.
One program in particular that the coalition is supporting is being organized by Keishia Thorpe, the Maryland teacher who was this year’s LifeChanger of the Year grand prize winner.
She is working with her school district to create a program where students can create school safety protocols that administrators will then implement if they are feasible.
The coalition believes Keishia’s initiative can be a pilot that, if successful, can be modified to other school districts around the country.
Keishia was not the only LifeChanger grand prize winner who participated in the retreat. Brian Copes of Alabama, who was the 2017-18 winner, was in Texas for the entire team. Additionally, three other LifeChanger winners were part of the retreat.