Heather Leykam, Principal, P.53K: Hi, everybody. Good morning, and thank you all for being here today. It is with true gratitude that I welcome you all here to the Spring Creek Campus of Brooklyn. So, my name is Heather Leykam, and I am the proud principal of P.53K. And today, I am joined by my fellow school principals.
Astrid Rousseau, Principal, Spring Creek Community School: Good morning, everyone. Astrid Rousseau, principal of Spring Creek Community School.
Tanisha Brown, Principal, Academy of Young Writers: Good morning, everyone. And Tanisha Brown, principal of the Academy for Young Writers.
Leykam: We are so proud to be joining our city leaders to announce this very important step in prioritizing the safety of each one of our students. And so, without further ado, please, I am pleased to introduce, to make today's announcement, our very own mayor, Mayor Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Good stuff. And you know, no matter what you do in life and how old you get, you still say principal. You know, you never stop saying principal. When I see my principals of years ago, I say the same thing.
This is such an important announcement. I really want to thank the CTO, Matt Fraser, for putting safety first. And as I see some of the crisis management team members here, particularly my brother, A.T. Mitchell, and the entire team here, they know how important public safety is.
Public safety is our North Star. And when I sit down with my scholars from across the entire city, I was really surprised when we held some of the youth conversations. A.T. joined me at some of them and asked, what do you want in the city and in the school? And public safety was number one. Public safety and access to quality mental health were the top issues.
Young people talked about it over and over with us, that they wanted to feel safe in their school and they wanted to feel safe in their community. And they don't want to lose their friends, their brothers, their sisters, and those who are their classmates to premature violence. And I think sometimes adults really did not understand how safety was to you important.
And then when you hear about some of the mass shootings that are taking place across our country, it impacts you and you feel it. And when you hear about a shooting that happens in your neighborhood and the person that you may know or may not know impacts you. And so we cannot stop some of this senseless violence. We're going to try like hell to do so, but we're not always successful. And so we need the right methodologies to ensure that you are safe if a shooting takes place.
We know that public safety is a prerequisite to our prosperity. We have to be safe. I know it. You know it. But we want to feel safe at the same time. Our parents must feel safe. Our students must feel safe. And today, due to what Chief Technology Officer Matt Fraser has accomplished, we are going to move in another direction and step to do so. And I take my hat off to our principals.
Being able to have an entire campus and be responsible for the entire school community at the same time as ensuring our children and our young people get the academic achievement that they deserve. But the holistic approach of making sure the campus is safe is a crucial, important job. And thank you so much for doing that every day. And, you know, you snuck in on me.
No one is more dogmatic about this community than our assemblywoman. We're going to have her come on in a moment. She's a fighter for East New York. And it is great, great, great seeing her. You know, you see Nikki, you know, the term we outside is Nikki Lucas. She is on the ground every day fighting for this community.
So today, we're pleased to announce our country's first pilot program that directly integrates public schools with New York City 911 services. This is not taking place anywhere in the country. This is the first location where we're doing it through this new initiative. Through this new initiative, we will save lives by providing rapid response in active shooting situation. And this is tested. This program was tested at OTI's lab. And now we are rolling it out to a total of 51 schools across the five boroughs during the 25-26 school year, starting right here on the Spring Creek campus in Brooklyn.
This system, our emergency alert system, can be activated from multiple fixed buttons and wireless lanyards within the school. Because it's not going to have to go through another system of being notified. It will go directly to 911 and is capable of initiating a 911 response in under 10 seconds. Our school-activated EAS will also bypass the New York City 911 call flow and be routed straight to real-time dispatch.
At the same time, schools will have audio and video indicators that notify students and faculty that New York City 911 has been alerted and the school is on a hard lockdown. In an ideal world, you know, it's hard to believe that we will have to even talk about having an emergency notification system because of an active shooter. But we cannot live in a level of idealism. We have to make public safety in realism. And this is the reality that we're in and we're going to address it.
Sadly, we do not live in an ideal world. We live in a very dangerous world. A numerical minority are committing the dangerous [crimes], but it's impacting the numerical majority and we want to make sure that you're safe. We're doing a lot under this administration– Where are you going with that baby? Leave the baby. The baby can make noise. Baby's not disrupting us. That baby stay right here. I have a permanent pinch on my knee that my mother pinched me all the time because I made a lot of noise. Trust me.
And so our administration has already done so much. Close to 24,000 illegal guns we removed off the streets. It's thanks to our proactive public safety efforts showing how important it is to be safe. Shootings are down up to 54 percent, homicides down 34 percent since we took office. And in September 2025, we see a 3 percent drop in crime. New York City remains the safest big city in America. But we have to make sure that we want to be the safest city across the globe. So, again, this is an important initiative. Thanks so much, CTO, for making this happen and doing the right thing. I want to bring on CTO Matt Fraser.
Matt Fraser, Chief Technology Officer: Thank you very much, sir. So, I'm Matt Fraser, the chief technology officer for New York City. What we're here talking about today is we're not here talking about technology.
We're talking about a safer New York City. And since the moment that this administration has taken foot, we've always been focused on the results and making sure that what we did actually had an impact that we could measure and one that we could feel. And what we're talking about today with this emergency alert system is that in the event that something happens in a school, minutes matter, seconds matter, and making sure that those that are in the school are aware of what's happening and getting them to the safest place possible.
For having the capability from any classroom or from any teacher being able to send an alert so that the vast majority of the school and everyone else can respond to that alert and get to a safe space is critical, especially at these times where we see these unprecedented sort of acts of violence.
In addition to that, being able to have emergency responders respond in real time and not just know that something's happening at a school but where in the school it's actually happening is something that's never been seen before. This is the first school in the nation to have this type of capability.
We're the first city in the nation to provide this type of capability. And what we look forward to is a much safer New York and a much safer United States. So with that, I think it's more important to hear from the people and hear from a part of the population, the people that will benefit from the service that we put in. It's my honor and privilege to introduce one of the students of the school, Alicia. Alicia, please step forward.
Alicia, Student, Academy for Young Writers: Thank you, Mr. Fraser. And good morning, Mayor Adams, Chancellor Aviles, and everyone that's present. As a student, I know firsthand how critical feeling safe, secure, and protected in school is. If we can't feel safe in school and know that every resource is activated in case of any emergency, how can we be expected to focus fully on our studies?
I know that our school already takes this work very seriously, with a school safety agent always at the front door and a new door lock-in system making sure that only students, teachers, and our families are able to enter. But this panic button pilot will offer additional peace of mind to myself and my fellow students so we can spend our time in school figuring what our passions are and just being kids. Every child deserves to feel safe in school, and I thank our city leaders for prioritizing this and all of us. Thank you all for your time.
Mayor Adams: Thank you. Any questions? No. Come on up, Assemblywoman Nikki Lucas.
State Assemblymember Nikki Lucas: Great day, everyone. Come on, y'all know the deal. Great day, everyone. So I just want to say thank you to Mayor Adams because he has been the only mayor that has been in East New York the most. He has made sure that he gave East New York not only a voice, but he gave us a voice through adding the necessary resources that we needed that we have not seen with any other mayor in the history of New York City.
And I'm not saying that because it sounds good or to toot his horn because if anybody knows me, y'all know that's not something I do. If you deserve your flowers, I give it to you, and if you deserve criticism, I'll give that to you, too. But he has made it his business to make the 60th Assembly District, which is the district that I represent, which is East New York, Brownsville, Canarsie, for us to be the trendsetter with this particular technology. And we are going to be, believe it or not, the example to the entire country.
I'm going to say that one more time. I don't think you understand what we have impacted. The parents, the students, we've impacted and inspired and motivated this technology to become and be the first in the country to inspire the world.
I'm sure that when this school first got here several years ago, we may not have imagined that it would take place and this would be the foundation for such an amazing experience that we're having today. I wasn't sure that we would be seen. We used to be, in terms of education, one of the worst districts in New York City. And to, with this mayor, continuously pound on the educational system for us to be seen, to creating pipelines for career paths, education, technology, that's inspiring you so that you understand that you can become anything that you want.
So, when I come into these environments, it's not just talking about the office of technology. It's not just talking about the mayor's office. It's about letting you know that you need to imagine yourself in these spaces creating the same type of technology. And the reason why it's important for us to do that is because it's not just about creating the same type of technology. And the reason why it's important that we make sure that you are the lead in this because we want you to truly know that if these faces, which are very diverse and look like you, if they're here and can do this and create these technologies to make things safe for us, there's no better person that can create it than yourselves.
And the reason why this is something that is true, because no one knows your community like you. No one can understand the needs of the community like you. So when it comes to inspiring ideas, you can only be the ones that do that. So, I just want to once again just thank the mayor for prioritizing East New York. Prioritizing our schools and prioritizing public safety in a way that is engaging and understanding that policing is not something that we should be afraid of.
Policing should be something that we're doing and using to protect, not just police. Right? And this is a partnership. And this is the beginning of that partnership. Advancing ideas, working together, understanding how we can advance public safety in our communities so that we are not the victims or the subject of tragic and countless news stories that include the loss of children and families throughout the country.
So I want you to be very proud of what's happening today. I thank the mayor, I thank the Office of Technology, the students, the parents, the Police Department. Just for everyone and their willingness to work together. To create something that inspires love and investment, a true investment for this community. So thank you. Love y'all.
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