Before February 14th, 2018, I ran an insurance practice. I had a career. I had a plan for what my life was going to look like. I had a 14-year-old son named Alex who played trombone in the marching band, who was funny and athletic and good. I had a family and a future.
After February 14th, none of that felt like the point anymore.
Twenty-three days after Alex was murdered, I helped pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in the Florida Legislature. I did not know how to do that. I had never lobbied for anything in my life. I just knew it had to happen and I was not going to stop until it did.
I put my former life on hold. And then slowly it stopped being on hold and became simply my former life. Because school safety is what I do now. It is all I do. And I have no plan of stopping.
In 8 years I have made a lot of trips to Washington DC and sat in 150+ meetings. I helped create SchoolSafety.gov, the federal clearinghouse for school safety resources. I testified before the United States House and Senate as a subject matter expert. I advised the FBI Behavioral Threat Assessment Center and the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center. I helped get the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed into law, which included codifying SchoolSafety.gov and the Luke and Alex School Safety Act.
I have also built a free School Safety Dashboard to publicize the numbers of assaults, weapons, bullying, and drugs occurring in schools across America. And I have established the Alex Schachter Scholarship Fund, which has raised $150,000 to support music education in Alex's name. Because Alex loved music. He would have been 22 years old now.
I tell you all of this not to list accomplishments. I tell you because I want you to understand why this newsletter exists. It is not a newsletter about school safety as an abstract policy issue. It is about a father who lost his son and decided that the only way to live with that is to spend every day making sure other parents do not have to live with the same thing.
I cannot bring Alex back. But I can keep going. And I am going to keep going until every school in this country is as safe as it can possibly be.
That is the mission. That is why I am here every week. That is why I am grateful you are reading this.
One thing to do this week
This is what the work built. The School Safety Dashboard is free for every parent, educator, and law enforcement officer in America. The Dashboard informs decisions that protect students, drives accountability, and builds safer schools so that children can learn, grow, and thrive. Check your school at schoolsafetydashboard.org
Alex would have been 22 this year. I think about that every single day. It is why I have not stopped and why I will not stop.
For Alex. And for all of them.
— Max Schachter