Florida House Bill 1421

After an emergency, quickly and safely reunify students with their guardians

What is Florida House Bill 1421?

In March 2022, the Florida legislature approved updates to the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act. The bill was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis June 7, 2022.

There are many updates to the 2018 bill, including new safety drill, family reunification and mental health considerations.

Emergency Drills: Previously, the school board’s emergency policies and procedures defined how the school conducted emergency drills. With the updated law, the State Board of Education (SBE) will now be responsible for setting the timing and frequency of these drills.
Reunification Policies and Procedures: The updated law now requires the Office of Safe Schools (OSS) to create a model family reunification plan for childcare facilities, K-12 schools, and postsecondary institutions. The OSS will also confirm that each district has adopted a plan for their schools.
Incident Reporting: One reporting method is school environmental safety incident reporting (SESIR). updates to the bill require that the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) publish the most recently available SESIR, accountability, and performance data in a format that can be easily understood.
Safe-school Officers: The updates to the bill require that all safe-school officers must complete mental health crisis intervention training, not just School Resource Officers (SROs).
Mental Health: The DOE partners with a national organization to provide training to school personnel. The updated bill requires that school districts annually certify, beginning July 1, 2023, that at least 80% of school staff received the training.

To see a detailed summary and learn how to comply with each update, download your free copy of Raptor’s Florida House Bill 1421 (HB 1421) analysis.

How to be Compliant with Florida House Bill 1421?

Part of the compliance requirements in the Florida House Bill 1421 mandates Florida schools to develop reunification processes that integrate with technology and thereby eliminate the chaos caused by the old pencil/paper or spreadsheet processes. Another mandate requires Florida schools to create more structure around how they practice and conduct school safety drills.

Raptor® Reunification: The MSD Commission described Seminole County Public Schools as a model district for other Florida schools to emulate—partially due to their use of Raptor Reunification in their reunification plan. With our Raptor Reunification, school staff can quickly confirm if the student is accounted for on-site, still at the school, or marked missing or injured—all in the Raptor mobile app. 
Raptor® Drill Manager: Enables schools to schedule drills and track compliance, quickly verify each building’s drill activity, and analyze reports to see what is working and where they need to improve performance.

Benefits of Raptor Reunification Software

Connected to your student information system, Raptor helps ensure students are only reunified with approved guardians.

Enables scanning of the guardian’s ID to check for status or custodial restrictions

Records and stores approved guardian signature
Software automatically sends alerts to the student’s other guardians upon successful reunification
Raptor dashboards update in real time during reunifications and automatically creates summary reports
Raptor is 100% aligned with the Standard Reunification Method from The “I Love U Guys” Foundation

Benefits of Raptor Drill Manager

Automates scheduling, conducting, and reporting on drills. This is key to analyzing drill performance, maintaining compliance, and creating muscle memory for a real-life emergency.

Allows schools to schedule, conduct, and track drills in compliance with school safety drill requirements
Helps create muscle memory to prepare for any emergency by practicing and learning from the drills
Automatically sends reminder notifications to schools so they’ll never miss another drill
The ability to initiate and run school drills directly from any mobile or web-enabled device
Create reports that can easily be customized and scheduled for analytical and investigative purposes
Quickly know status for every building, drill type, and compliance status

What Our Customers Are Saying

Raptor provides technology that meets and exceeds the requirements of the new law. Enabling schools to reunite families four times faster than traditional processes, Raptor Reunification software gives school districts the power to streamline and manage reunification in one easy-to-use application that works on any device.

"Evacuating students to a safe location is just one part of dealing with many emergencies. Keeping track of students and getting them reunited with their families represents the next big challenge. Raptor’s reunification system includes an easy-to-use app that streamlines this process, eliminating paperwork and improving communication among those responding to the emergency. Our initial drills with this technology have been favorable, and Raptor has been quick to make modifications to suit our needs.”

Capt. Jill Seymour

Director of Safe Schools for Polk County Public Schools

“Sumter County has taken a proactive approach to reunification by coordinating with local first responders and community leaders. We’ve also implemented Raptor’s reunification technology to create a more reliable and effective process for reuniting children with their guardians after an emergency. Raptor continues to be a key partner and is enabling us to build a reunification program that will exceed the requirements of this new law.”

Darren Norris

School Safety Specialist for Sumter County Schools

The Raptor Difference

Effective K-12 emergency management is not just about software features. Schools need a partner that understands them and is a proven ally to keep students safe.

Established Florida presence

Raptor is a trusted and credible K-12 safety software provider for 73% of Florida districts, totaling over 2,500 individual schools. Reduce complexity with a partner already in your schools.

Implementation experts

Raptor has innovative, streamlined implementation based on over 18 years of experience. This means we will have you up and running by the deadline.

More than a vendor

You will not be just another client. Raptor will provide you with ongoing expertise and relentless innovation to help you better protect your students, staff, and buildings from any threat. Raptor is a partner to over 35,000 K-12 U.S. schools and maintains an annual client retention rate of 98%.

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of Florida districts—those highlighted on the map above—use Raptor to protect their students and staff.

StudentSafe^™ Early Intervention Software

Visitor Management System

Emergency Management System

Client Success and Training

Volunteer Management System

SchoolPass Attendance & Hall Pass Management

SchoolPass Dismissal Management

- Chris Allen, Crisis Management Technician, Laramie County School District WY

- Michael Barbara, Safety Coordinator, Alhambra (CA) USD

- David Wrzesinski, Director of Safety and Emergency Management, Robinson (TX) ISD

Funding

School Safety Best Practices

School Safety Legislation

2022 State of School Safety Report

Florida House Bill 1421

What is Florida House Bill 1421?

How to be Compliant with Florida House Bill 1421?

Benefits of Raptor Reunification Software

Benefits of Raptor Drill Manager

What Our Customers Are Saying

The Raptor Difference

Related Resources

DCPS Staff, Police Practice Reuniting Parents with Kids in Emergency Scenario

The National Impact of Florida House Bill 1421

School Emergency Response Best Practices

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