Testimony Before the DC Council Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety at the Public Hearing on the Safe Passage Training and School Engagement Amendment Act of 2025
By Nicole Travers, Senior Director of School Support and Program Data
Good morning, members of the Committee. Thank you, Councilmember Pinto, for your leadership on public safety. My name is Nicole Travers, and I’m the Senior Director of School Support and Program Data at the DC Charter School Alliance. We advocate on behalf of the 68 nonprofit organizations operating 134 public charter schools in the District—serving nearly 48,000 students, from early childhood through adult education, or almost half of all public school students in DC.
I’m here today to voice our support for the Safe Passage Training and School Engagement Amendment Act of 2025 and offer recommendations to further strengthen this bill. First, I want to thank the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Appiah and her team—especially Jasmin Benab, Director of Community Outreach—for their proactive and collaborative leadership since management and oversight of the Safe Passage program was shifted to their office.
At the Alliance, we are deeply committed to the safety of our students and our communities. For the last two years, in collaboration with the PCSB, we have hosted biweekly safety calls with leaders from more than 80% of our charter LEAs and representatives of District agencies like MPD, DDOT, Homeland Security, and the DMPSJ and DME. The bi-weekly calls serve as an ongoing virtual forum for charter school safety leaders to share their concerns, challenges, and recommendations directly with the District’s public safety officials. These calls have surfaced real issues and generated direct responses—from MPD deployment adjustments to more targeted support from violence interrupters and Safe Passage teams—and helped inform the DME’s March 2024 School Safety Enhancement Committee report and ongoing implementation of its recommendations.
Since working with the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice team and Ms. Benab, we have seen many positive changes and enhanced responsiveness from the Safe Passage Program. For example, after an off-campus fight earlier this year involving students from several Ward 7 schools, Ms. Benab immediately contacted us to help connect with school leaders, share context, and coordinate a plan to de-escalate tensions before they grew. Similarly, when gunfire was heard near a Ward 4 school without regular Safe Passage coverage, Ms. Benab quickly arranged deployment of a floater team to provide on-the-ground support to the school community. This is the responsive and strategic leadership that defines an effective safety program.
Beyond emergencies, this team has also shown real commitment to building trust among stakeholders—like hosting a back-to-school resource fair to engage students, families, and safety personnel in a positive, welcoming environment. Likewise, the development of new tools like the public Safe Passage route map has helped school leaders coordinate their own efforts more efficiently, and provides families and students useful information about Safe Passage support along critical routes to and from schools.
Recommendations for Continued Collaboration and Feedback
As we continue to collaborate with the DMPSJ and other stakeholders to improve school safety, we welcome this legislation’s focus on regular convenings of school leaders, Safe Passage Program staff, and safety agencies and the new requirements for enhanced training for Safe Passage workers. I have three recommendations that we believe will further strengthen the proposal. All three of these recommendations seek to build on the legislation and create structures that support continuous improvement of the program:
First, we recommend creating structures that allow school leaders from both the charter and DCPS sectors to provide input on the agenda topics for the twice-yearly Safe Passage convenings. This will ensure the convenings are responsive to what’s happening in schools and allow cross-sector collaboration to continue to flourish.
Second, while we support the training topics identified in the bill, we recommend that the training be standardized and developed with input from experts at OSSE as well as school leaders. This is especially important for sensitive training topics, like engaging positively with students with disabilities, neurodivergence, or mental health challenges. Developing standardized training informed by experts skilled in working with diverse student populations will help ensure consistency across staff managed by multiple community based organizations, enabling safe passage workers to be trained thoroughly, thoughtfully, and appropriately. This training should be conducted at least annually, with quarterly refresher sessions focused on how the training was applied to real-life situations.
Finally, we recommend establishing a simple, ongoing feedback process—such as a short end-of-year survey—for school leaders and community-based organizations to reflect on the training and offer suggestions for areas that may need further refinement. This isn’t about adding bureaucracy—it’s about building a basic feedback loop for continuous improvement so the training stays relevant and effective year after year.
Moving Forward
We’re proud to be strong partners with the DMSJ, DME, and our member schools in creating safe learning environments. Thank you, Councilmember Pinto, for your continued leadership and for considering the thoughtful recommendations of our coalition partners and school communities.
