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We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission to keep our nation’s K-12 schools safe by providing education, information, research, accreditation, and guidance to our communities. The NSSPA utilizes a diverse group of experts and professionals from across the nation to help the public prevent, mitigate, prepare, and respond to, and recover from emergencies primarily in a K-12 environment.
According to 2016 data, there are 131,390 private and public schools in the United States, with 56 million students and 8 million staff members.
The NSSPA is here for each and every one of you.
We complete our mission by utilizing diverse
We offer various events that help educate and inform the user regarding safety & security in our schools. We are here to help you navigate through the sometime muddy waters of safety & security in the K-12 environment.
Protecting from unintentional or accidental damage, loss, injury, or death. Typically unplanned acts.
Protecting from intentional and/or man-made damage, loss, injury, or death. Typically planned and deliberate acts.
An individual active engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.
Any time a gun is fired on school grounds, involving a school bus, during a school event, during school hours, or right before or after school.
Military and police refer to doorways as fatal funnels because you can easily be killed entering through one. The NSSPA has renamed the Fatal Funnel to a Life Opening since that same doorway can save lives. In addition to the door, the Life Opening includes the handle, lock, hinges, frame, glass/vision lite, and any adjacent glass. The reason for this is that active shooters have not only shot the door or door glass but they have also broken the side lites to gain entry to a room or building.
Safety Film:
1. Invented to protect glass from shattering due to high wind or weather conditions.
2. Safety film is made to protect against accidental damage to a glass window.
3. Was not designed to stop or slow down a human attack.
4. Was not designed to slow down or stop an attacker with a firearm or someone with malicious intent.
5. No safety film or window film in the world is bullet resistant or bulletproof.
Security Film:
1. Provides for the reduction of risk or the occurrence of injury, loss, or death from the intentional actions of man.
2. Is designed for anti-intrusion and will substantially delay and/or prevent an intruder from entering.
3. Will give more time for people inside to get to safety and for emergency response teams to arrive.
4. It has been tested to the ASTM F3561 Standard, a much higher standard than the safety film. The ASTM F3561 Standard is recommended by the National Glass Association (NGA)
The ASTM F3561 test method was created by subject matter experts in active shooter, physical security, and counter-terrorism that are former military, special forces, SWAT, and Federal law enforcement. The Standard Test Method for ASTM F3561, “Forced-Entry-Resistance of Fenestration Systems After Simulated Active Shooter Attack,” is the only testing standard in the glass and door industry that combines shooting specimens with an AR15 and then attacking them with a 100-lb ram with a repeatable and measurable amount of force. The door and hardware industry has utilized battering rams to measure the force a door and hardware can withstand in their Attack Resistant Certifications. However, it has never added shooting the product first until now. We stand firm and united with the National Glass Association’s decision to mandate this standard on all film and glass used for all door glass and adjoining glass for schools across America. We recommend ASTM F3561 hardening for all Life Openings in America’s K-12 Schools.
