When it comes to promoting safe schools, it’s too often a responsibility many of us like to push off onto others.

That’s why we applaud the efforts of four Drakes Creek Middle School students who are leading an innovative project that could potentially save their classmates’ lives.

Through the national Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest, seventh-grader Anthony Clauson and eighth-graders Isaak Truelove, Jack Sikes and Landon Pulliam are developing security drones and mobile phone apps to prevent mental illness and gun violence.

It’s a project that could win their school thousands of dollars through a contest that’s giving away $2 million in classroom technology. The students recently earned the opportunity to represent their school as a state finalist, which only five Kentucky schools have managed to achieve.

“We want to prevent as many deaths as possible,” Landon said in a recent Daily News article.

As schools across Kentucky struggle to improve safety, we commend these students for stepping up to fix a problem that affects their community, which is what the spirit of the competition is all about.

Over the next several months, the students will be developing their drones that are designed to surveil and potentially delay a school intruder.

Additionally, their efforts to develop apps that raise awareness about gun safety and mental health could help countless students. It’s a smart way to meet young people where they’re at with life-saving information.

Their work has also inspired Lisa Cary, the school’s technology teacher, who’s been cheering them on.

“It’s been exciting to see them be able to use the knowledge they have in these STEM fields to actually come up with something that’s going to help our community,” Cary told the Daily News.

The contest is also a great way to pair community service with an opportunity to develop skills in some of the nation’s fastest-growing and most lucrative fields.

Regardless of how the contest goes for these students, it’s obvious they all have bright futures ahead of them.