Arm teachers, report says
A report into the deadliest US high school shooting calls for arming teachers and more security, Rich McKay, of Reuters, reports.
ARM teachers, spend more on school security and mental health and train police to be more aggressive when responding to school shootings — those are some of the recommendations in a recent report into the deadliest United States high school shooting.
The report into the Parkland, Florida school massacre, that left 14 pupils and three adults dead at the hands of a lone gunman in February 2018, will be studied by Florida Governor Rick Scott, Governorelect Ron DeSantis and a state commission charged with finding ways to prevent another school shooting massacre.
The report, by the stateappointed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, finds a cascade of errors from law enforcement officers holding back as shots were fired and lax school security that allowed a former pupil with an ARstyle semiautomatic rifle access to the campus.
The Parkland shooting has sparked a national debate about school security, gunrights, and fuelled a pupilled movement calling for more guncontrol, called Never Again MSD, after the school’s initials.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the school safety commission, said he supported arming some guntrained teachers.
But not everyone on the 16member commission agreed with all of its findings.
Commission member Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was killed at Stoneman Douglas, said she opposed the idea of arming teachers.
‘‘Teachers want to teach,’’ she said.
‘‘That’s their expertise. Law enforcement, their expertise is supposed to be to engage the threat.’’
Other recommendations included more funding for mental health services for pupils, creating safe areas at schools where pupils can hide from a gunman, locking school perimeter gates while school is in session and requiring police to immediately seek out a shooter instead of hanging back.