PEARLS serves the youngest children in Florida by providing valuable training and resources to those who protect them during schooltime – early childhood educators.

During a training session, the PEARLS team discusses how to evaluate the school environment to better understand how it can offer protection from danger. The ability to make quick decisions under pressure is crucial to mitigating risk and saving lives. The PEARLS training will help your staff understand actions that could change the outcome of an event. Training and practice familiarize our brains with this topic and knowledge supports the ability to make decisions and act quickly in dangerous situations. PEARLS has received comments from its trainees that firmly support this concept along with the necessity of thinking in a new way about safety in schools. PEARLS uses several tools in the training process—a PowerPoint presentation with a training video; “Miss Collins”, a book to assist in introducing the concepts to the children; and a flip book of valuable emergency information.

An underlying theme throughout the PEARLS training is that communication and collaboration with law enforcement can help avoid or shorten an episode and save lives.
Attacks by an active shooter often are usually fast-paced and often over before law enforcement can arrive at the scene, so it is critical that your staff understand options such as evacuation, lockdown with barricade, and counter to provide essential protection immediately.