‘We had to do something.’ Parkland inspires a school safety group and ‘stop bleed’ kits
Ashley Freedland remembers that Valentine’s Day in 2018. A seventh-grader, she was standing with a teacher outside her middle school when she heard there had been a school shooting in the community. That school was Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.
“That moment was a key moment for me,” recalls Ashley, then a student at the University School in Davie and now a senior at Cypress Bay High School in Weston. “I realized, and I think a lot of my friends realized, that we had to do something to keep our schools and ourselves safe.”
Three years later she founded a club that has raised enough money to outfit every classroom in her high school with a medical Stop the Bleed kit. Because the rapid loss of blood can result in death, the person nearest someone with life-threatening injuries is best positioned to provide first care, boosting the chance of survival.
But before the kits, there was a fateful meeting.
Last year, Ashley was introduced to Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter, Alyssa Alhadeff, was one of the 17 people murdered in the Parkland shooting. The tragedy would inspire Alhadeff to run for the Broward County School Board, on which she now serves, and to launch, with her husband, Ilan, an organization that seeks to ensure safety in schools around the country.
That nonprofit, Make Our Schools Safe (MOSS), has one overarching mission: “That no other parent has to go through the pain we live with,” Alhadeff said.
Ashley knew the Alhadeffs’ traumatic story. Her father, Michael, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer, sat on the all-volunteer steering committee of the Broward Education Foundation’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Victims’ Fund, which is responsible for equitably distributing the money raised for the victims’ families, including survivors.
When her father made the introduction, Ashley was impressed with Alhadeff’s eloquence and passion. She could identify with the goal of the foundation and felt certain Cypress Bay needed its own MOSS club.
“She explained MOSS to me, what she wanted to do with it,” Ashley said. “It was really special how she wanted to honor her daughter with its work.”
After recruiting her friends, she approached Paul Gorlick, who had been her ninth-grade honors world history teacher. When 45 students showed up for the initial club meeting, Gorlick wasn’t surprised.
“It hits home for these students,” he said. “We have good security here, but in this day and age, the more security the better.”
The first project of the MOSS Club at Cypress Bay was to raise about $15,000 through a raffle and a large donation from the Rotary Club of Weston. That money bought 298 Stop the Bleed medical kits for the school. Every classroom and common area now has one. They were installed the first week of this school year.
Each kit contains a tourniquet, dressing, a marker, a pair of gloves, a compression bandage and masks. Training on how to use the supplies is provided by the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
Ashley wants to extend that training to every student and teacher. “You never know when you’ll need them,” she said.
While the student club intended the kits for a shooting situation, Gorlick says they can be used in other ways, too. “This kind of safety isn’t just for guns,” he said. “Someone can fall and gash a leg and we have the kits right here to offer aid.”
One of the goals of the Make Our Schools Safe organization, Alhadeff says, is to establish a MOSS club in every school and supply every classroom in the country with a kit.
“I think they are a model for what other students can do at their schools,” Alhadeff said of the Cypress Bay High students. “They set a goal and they accomplished that goal. As I tell students, ‘Your voice is your power.’ They’ve proven that.”
The installation of Stop the Bleed kits is only the start for the Cypress Bay MOSS Club, Ashley said. Members have been discussing another project — installing ID scanners at the two entrances of every school building on campus.
Meanwhile, Alhadeff vows to continue pushing for a MOSS club at every school while also lobbying to pass safety legislation called Alyssa’s Law. The legislation calls for the installation of silent panic alarms that are linked to law enforcement. The law has already passed in Florida, New York and New Jersey, and has been introduced in other states and on the federal level.
Both Alyssa’s Law and Stop the Bleed kits address the importance of a quick reaction, both medically and from law enforcement, in case of a shooting.
“Every second counts in an emergency,” Alhadeff said. “It can be the difference between life and death.”
How to help
Interested in starting a MOSS club in your school or supporting the passage of Alyssa’s Law? Visit www.makeourschoolssafe.org for information.
