THE ASK: Tell your school board to educate the school community about secure storage by:

1. Passing a secure storage resolution
2. Communicating with families about secure storage

Secure firearm storage is an essential component of any effective strategy to keep schools, students, and communities safe.

You can advocate for secure storage education by:

• Learning about the impacts and importance of secure storage,
• Contacting and gaining support from relevant stakeholders, and
• Speaking in front of the school board.

Know the facts. Educate yourself and others about how secure firearm storage can increase school safety and help to prevent firearm suicide or unintentional shootings. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund’s Be SMART campaign framework is a great place to start:

• Secure all guns in your home and vehicles
• Model responsible behavior around guns
• Ask about the presence of unsecured guns in other homes
• Recognize the role of guns in suicide
• Tell your peers to be SMART

You can also use the School Safety and Secure Firearm Storage Fact Sheet to show your school board that secure storage reduces the risk of gun violence in schools and increases safety at home for children. Provide the Be SMART flyer about secure storage practices as well to show just how simple potentially life-saving measures can be. As of February 2026, more than 11 million students across the country live in districts that require schools to educate parents and guardians about the critical role of secure firearm storage in keeping students safe.

Do the research and present the most appropriate resolution. This toolkit contains two resolutions, one for states without pre-existing secure storage laws and one (which has three versions) for states with differing degrees of secure storage laws. Both resolutions list the states for which they are applicable at the top. This can be a time-consuming job, especially at a big school, and the school board should appreciate any help your group can give!

THE ASK: Tell your school board not to arm teachers.

Arming teachers does not make our schools safer. An armed teacher cannot, in a moment of extreme duress and confusion, be expected to transform into a specially trained law enforcement officer. These policies put the entire school community at risk and jeopardize the trusting environment that is essential for keeping schools safe.

However, school boards often have the final say on arming teachers’ policies in their district(s). That means students, parents, teachers, and other community members can work with their school boards to keep guns out of our classrooms.

You can find out if your state allows teachers or the general public to carry guns in K-12 schools here.

The research below highlights these risks associated with arming teachers. Use these points to underscore to others the importance of opposing arming teachers.

The research

• Learn more: Unpacking Arming Teachers Laws
• In a 2022 survey of nearly 1,000 US teachers, 54 percent expressed the belief that allowing teachers to carry firearms for school security would decrease overall safety.
• 76 percent of surveyed pre-K–12 educators oppose arming teachers and staff in public schools.
• An analysis of over five decades of active shooter incidents in K–12 schools found that in three in four of these incidents, the shooter or shooters were school-age and were current or former students. Meaning, teachers would be tasked with confronting a student and being put in the position to harm them to protect other students, a dangerous and unrealistic proposal.
• Damaging student-teacher relationships has consequences for school safety: High school students with lower levels of school connectedness are more likely to engage in violence with a weapon on school property.
• An alternative to arming teachers is enacting Sensible Gun Laws
  • Extreme Risk Laws
  • Secure firearm storage laws
  • Laws requiring background checks on all gun sales
  • Laws raising the age to purchase semiautomatic firearms to 21
  • Laws prohibiting assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
• There are also school-based interventions that prioritize the safety of students over putting more guns in more places:
  • Informing parents, guardians, and other adults in the home about secure gun storage
  • Fostering a safe and trusting school climate for all students
  • Implementing trauma-informed crisis intervention programs to help schools identify and de-escalate dangerous situations
  • Ensuring sufficient mental health counselors
  • Implement school security enhancements
  • Initiate trauma-informed emergency planning

THE ASK: Tell your school board to make sure drills are trauma-informed.

Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund’s study with Georgia Tech showed that active shooter drills involving students in schools are associated with significant and lasting increases in:

• Depression
• Stress and anxiety, and
• Fear of death among school communities

Active shooter drills are traumatizing a generation of young people, and there’s little proof that these drills help save lives. Schools need to do what it takes to keep students, educators, and staff safe, while balancing their well-being. Students can advocate for a reconsideration of how active shooter drills are conducted.

Additionally:

1. Drills should not include simulations that mimic an actual incident
2. Parents or guardians should be given advanced notice of drills
3. Drills should be announced to students and educators before they start
4. Schools should create age and developmentally appropriate drill content with the involvement of school personnel, including school-based mental health professionals
5. Schools should couple drills with trauma-informed approaches to address students’ wellbeing both during the drills and over a sustained period thereafter
6. Schools should track data about the efficacy and effects of drills

THE ASK: Tell your school board to increase funding for mental health support.

School-employed mental health professionals serve as a critical resource for students as they navigate the education system and the challenges of emotional and social development. These professionals may also be among the first to know when students are experiencing problems or when they are at risk of turning to violence.

Students can spark culture change in school boards simply by putting the topic of mental health front and center.

• The impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on youth mental health,
• The impact that fear of gun violence in schools or continued cycles of violence in communities has on students’ well-being and educational performance, and
• The increased risk of gun violence in schools as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic

You can share with the school board that it is challenging for students to meet with the school counselor or therapist when there are not enough of them. And this need is often exacerbated in under-resourced communities.

No one understands student mental health better than students. That is why it is essential that students advocate for mental health resources.

School boards, or boards of education, are governing bodies responsible for the decision-making that directly impacts public education within a community. Boards typically operate at the district or county level. As students, you are key stakeholders in the work school boards do. The decisions they make impact your daily life, including:

• Your curriculum
• Your school’s budget
• Your school’s health and safety guidelines

Set yourself up for success by learning about your school board. This includes researching things like:

• When and where meetings are regularly scheduled,
• Who the representatives are,
• If you or your group members have any connections to your local school board members,
• What the processes for creating change consist of,
• How meetings are typically organized,
• How to secure speaking time on the agenda,
• Where to submit topics for consideration, and more.

The more well-versed you are in the workings of the board, the smoother it will be to advocate for change when the time comes.

As student advocates, you are key stakeholders in the effort to make schools safe from gun violence. Additionally, it is helpful to identify additional credible messengers who are able to speak at the school board meeting to support your point of view. Some examples of key stakeholders include:

• Survivors of gun violence,
• School faculty,
• Community violence intervention workers,
• Child psychologists,
• Pediatricians, and
• Moms Demand Action volunteers who are parents in the school system.

Talking directly with school board members can set you up for success as you begin to navigate your advocacy campaign. It is beneficial to develop a relationship with a school board member. They can often provide you with valuable information, such as which tactics are most likely to have an impact on board members’ decisions, and which members will align with you right away versus which will take more work to sway their vote.

Sometimes, just one email to each board member from several students will demonstrate valid support. Under other circumstances, you may need to recruit larger numbers of students to send emails, or students may need to be more consistent, sending an email multiple weeks in a row.

• Draft sample email templates supporting your goal,
• Compile the email addresses of board members, and
• Distribute the information to members of your Students Demand Action group, other clubs, your classmates, or the student body at large.

Remind the students who are sending emails that school board members are elected to represent students. Students should voice their opinions and concerns frequently: A school board’s job is to listen to students!

Publishing your voice is a powerful way to educate the public about your campaign and urge the school board to take action. Letters to the editor (LTEs) are short (150 – 250-word) pieces made up of:

• A strong lead-off statement about the issue and why it matters to you and/or the audience,
• Two to three sentences supporting your argument with data and facts, and
• A call to action conclusion.

Use our Letter-to-the-Editor toolkit to get started!

Now that you have done your research on how school board advocacy is most effective and how to approach gun safety advocacy in this space, contact the necessary parties to secure a spot on the upcoming agenda.

There are different ways to present your case to the school board, including:

• Individual verbal testimonies,
• Group testimony,
• Distributing fact sheets to the board, or
• A group presentation with a slide deck of the facts and your argument.

You should be well-prepared ahead of the meeting, and all students who are presenting should know their roles. Make sure to register your school board presentation event here.