SchoolReach Participates in Launch of Missouri State Capital Field Trip Safety Kit

Jefferson City, MO It's the time of year when students throughout the state take field trips. Now a new resource is available to help keep kids safe on those trips. The Field Trip Safety Toolkit has been developed by the Missouri Center for Education Safety and is available to school districts sending students to Jefferson City to visit the Capitol and other sites. The toolkit includes child-safe lanyards that replace student name badges and other methods that contain personal identification information. In addition the trip coordinator and lead bus driver are issued special cell phones with push-to-talk capability that are linked to the student lanyards. If a student is separated from his or her group, a public safety officer or any other person can simply call the number on the lanyard and the call is sent directly to the trip coordinator's or school bus driver's cell phone so the student can be reunited with the group.

The issued phones can also be entered into an alerting/ messaging system so that the trip coordinator and lead bus driver receive notification from public safety officials of an emergency situation such as approaching severe weather.

"This toolkit can help ensure that a student who may become separated from the school group can be reunited with the group quickly and safely," says Paul Fennewald, special advisor to the Center for Education Safety. "We envision expanding the availability of this toolkit to other field trip destinations in the state," he adds.

The Field Trip Safety Toolkit is available free of charge to student groups visiting Jefferson City. Prior to the trip schools need to register for the Toolkit and then pick it up at the Center for Education Safety located in the Governor Office Building, directly across the street from the Governor's Mansion.

The Missouri Center for Education Safety is a partnership of the Missouri School Boards' Association, the Missouri Department of Public Safety and the Missouri Office of Homeland Security.

SchoolReach Instant Parent Contact is participating in this program through the donation of our notification system to the Missouri CES, offering a means to broadcast a vital message simultaneously to all field trip leaders on site at the Missouri state capital on any given day at any time of need.

Media Contacts:

Brent Ghan, Missouri School Boards Assn.(573) 445-9920, ex. 376

Paul Langhorst, Chief Marketing Officer: (314) 748-5026

##