Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Parkland, Columbine issues ‘eerily similar’
After each mass shooting, challenges, goals the same
Emergency radio problems. Schools with too many entry points. Questions about law enforcement’s response. A focus on mental illness. A call to prepare students for active shooters.
The issues being tackled in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland are “eerily similar” to those that faced the Columbine community after the 1999 mass shooting there, a Littleton, Colo., school safety official said Wednesday.
Guy Grace, director of security and emergency preparedness for the school district adjacent to Columbine’s, warned the Public Safety Commission at a meeting in Sunrise that the work to improve security and to heal never ends.
“Our response to it has been going on since 1999,” he said of the Columbine shooting that killed 13 people. “There is never a day … where you’re not reminded of that tragedy.”
Grace presented some of his district’s
security improvements, as Broward schools — and schools statewide — evaluate how to better brace for a potential tragedy.
The Broward school district plans extra security when the doors open to students on Aug. 15.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Public Safety Commission, created by the state Legislature, could recommend more sweeping upgrades for schools statewide. The board is expected to submit a report summarizing its findings by January.
Grace said his community had to get over the fear of teaching small children about scary things like stemming bleeding.
In his school district, all the students are taught how to lock classroom doors.
“We train every student from kindergarten on how to push that button and lock that door,” he said.
The classroom doors have easy, push-button locks in the inside, and key locks on the outside. In Florida, the push-button locks inside the classrooms are not allowed, said Commission Chairman Bob Gualtieri, sheriff of Pinellas County.
Children 11 and older in Grace’s district are taught first aid and stop-thebleeding techniques, with parent approval, he said.
“Giving them strategies will save their lives,” he said, “and the lives of others.”
The key areas for improvement, he said, are first responders’ and school employees’ radio systems, access points to schools, a unified command center for those handling active scenes and coordinated active shooter plans.
“It’s going to take years to heal,” he warned at a meeting of the commission in Sunrise. “And for people who lost children in that event, it’s a lifetime.”
The commission also discussed:
PARKLAND SHOOTER:
Gualtieri said information about the shooter’s mental health and school history can’t be divulged to the public but has been reviewed by the commission members. A closed-door session to go over more of the shooter Nikolas Cruz’s personal history is scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Gualtieri said the information can’t be disclosed, even though it “provides some of the answers the community is looking for as to what happened and why.” But he said he thought the commission’s final report, due in January, still would help the public know “what led up to” the Feb. 14 shooting.
SHOOTER’S ESCORT:
When the school shooter was “mainstreamed” for portions of his middle school and high school years, there were times he was required to be escorted anywhere he went, whether it was changing classes or going to the bathroom. Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley asked about the reasoning. Gualtieri said the Broward school district was trying to keep him in a regular school, the least restrictive setting, as the law requires. Ashley called it “a mistake.” “If you need an escort in order to function at a school, you forfeit your right” to a mainstreamed education, he said.
GUARDIANS:
Only 13 people have gone through the school system’s process to become armed school “guardians,” Max Schachter, whose son Alexander was one of the 17 killed at Stoneman Douglas, told the board. The program started with 22 employees, but he said nine didn’t qualify or quit. “We need a lot more than that by [the first day of school]” he said. “It is extremely upsetting that that’s all we have so far.”