House rejects bid to discuss weapons ban
Workshops draw officials, students in wake of shooting.
TALLAHASSEE — A flurry of meetings took place in Florida’s capital Tuesday in response to last week’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, with dozens of leaders in education, law enforce- ment, and mental health pouring into the city to participate in a trio of workshops organized by Gov. Rick Scott.
Some of those same leaders were to later attend a round-table discussion hosted by Scott on Tuesday night.
The meetings come nearly a week after the mass shooting at the Parkland high school left 14 students and three teachers dead. A 19-year-old former student, Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with their murders.
Meanwhile, as groups of Broward County students arrived Tuesday at the Capitol to visit with lawmakers and call for more gun control legislation before their rally scheduled for today, the Florida House turned down an attempt to take up a bill designed to prevent the sale and possession of assault weapons.
The AR-15 rifle that Broward County sheriff ’s investigators say was used by Cruz would have been covered by the bill (HB 219), which was filed in October but has not been heard in House committees. Rep. Kionne McGhee, D-Miami, used an unusual procedural move Tuesday to try to pull the bill out of committee and hear it on the House floor, but the House voted 71-36 without debate to reject taking up the measure on the floor.
A Senate version of the bill (SB 196), filed by Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, also has not been heard in committees.
The shooting has left Scott, who is expected to challenge Democrat Bill Nelson for the U.S. Senate, and Republican leaders, who control the Legislature, scrambling with just weeks left in the 2018 legislative session.
At the meeting of law enforcement officials, talk centered on keeping firearms away from those arrested under the Baker Act, expanding background checks before guns can be purchased and arming teachers.
Across town at the Florida Department of Children and Families, social workers, behavior specialists, and mental health counselors hashed out ideas to improve mental health, including coordination of care and early screening.
And at the Florida Department of Education, Commissioner Pam Stewart moderated a discussion on school safety improvement and security protocols.
Sheriffs and police chiefs, whose ideas will be packaged and presented to Scott for potential action, bluntly talked of the need to increase funding to expand the number of school resource officers, along with revamping how emergency drills are conducted.
Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco noted that fire alarm drills have been conducted in his county the same way since 1958, while campuses are now designed in vast expanses.
At the meeting about mental-health issues, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera posed the first question.
“What is it about the young males in their development or external factors or media or society that drives them to do these unspeakable horrific things?” Lopez-Cantera asked rhetorically, according to the News Service of Florida. “Because it’s males. They’re doing it. And I haven’t heard anything about that.”
The experts said that just a fraction of mentally ill people — between 1 and 4 percent — become violent.
“The angry young men is a pretty big group, but we’re talking about a very small group that present a risk in our schools,” said child psychiatrist R. Scott Benson.
Dean Aufderheide — director of mental health services for the Florida Department of Corrections — said sociopaths need to be identified through screening before they can commit heinous crimes such as the Parkland massacre.
Stewart opened the education workshop by acknowledging photos of the deceased projected on a screen.
“I though it important that we be reminded ... of why we are here,” Stewart said. “When we see these photos, we are touched.”
The focus of this meeting turned to the role of counselors and school psychologists and increasing their numbers in schools.
The American School Counselor Association recommends one counselor for every 250 students, but the number of students now being served by one counselor is nearly double that, at 381, according to the National Association of School Psychologists..
Phil DeAugustino, guidance director at Flagler Palm Coast High School, said changing the above requires acknowledging that each professional handles different tasks.
A school counselor’s training prepares them to handle academic matters, not mental health, he said.
More money to hire additional counselors also is needed, said Sam Himmel, Citrus County’s schools superintendent.
Building relationships with students and getting them involved with school activities, like sports or service projects, can also be a venue to helping troubled students, DeAugustino said.
While interventions are helpful, prevention of more mass shootings starts with more gun control, said Stephen Marante, a student at Coral Springs High School who lives in Parkland.
“We can’t sit here and say we need to put more kids on sports teams,” he said. “Now, we have to figure out how this kid can’t get an AR-15 and shoot up a school.”
Tighter controls on access to guns is one of the issues Broward student Victoria Mejia, 15, said she talked about with legislators.
Mejia, who attends South Broward High School, said making the trip up to the state capital was necessary so that lawmakers could “see and hear our pain.”
“This was important to me because (the shooting) shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “My sister told me she knows what the protocol is if there’s a shooting. That’s not something she should have to worry about. She should be worried about her science project.”