Final preparations being made for school safety conference – WV MetroNews

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Final preparations are being made for the West Virginia School Safety Conference which is set for the end of the month at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.

The two-day event, organized by the Mountain State Educational Services Cooperative, is set for Oct. 26-27. It will provide continuing education credits through a number of forums related to school safety issues. Both police and school personnel from across the state will be attendance.

Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Rob Cunningham, a member of the West Virginia School Safety Committee, said the conference will once again provide top-flight keynote speakers.

“These are educators who have decades of experience, we also have psychologists and we also have parents who have lost parents in tragic events,” Cunningham said.

Michele Gay, who lost her daughter Josephine Grace in the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, will speak on Friday, Oct. 27.

Gay is an educator, and co-founder of Safe and Sound Schools.

MORE See conference packet here

Other speakers include Dr. Steve Webb, a former school principal and emergency preparedness expert; Dr. Peter Langman is a psychologist who has researched school shooters; Paul Timm, an author on school safety and director and director of school safety at Allegion and Dr. Jim Harris, Associate Director of Training at the West Virginia Autism Training Center located at Marshall University.

Cunningham said it’s one thing to read from a report from an after action shooting but it’s another thing to listen to people who were actually there.

“Every time I go to one of these conferences I pick up something that helps us in the state of West Virginia to keep our schools safer,” Cunningham said.

There were also be vendors at the conference who will display the latest on school safety equipment.