‘Stand with Parkland’ unites grieving families
Banding together in their shared grief, the families of the slain Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School victims launched a new group, Stand With Parkland, to stop the possibility of another mass shooting at a school.
Sixteen of the 17 families who lost loved ones have joined for a comprehensive, bipartisan approach addressing school safety, mental health support and gun ownership. The group launched today and is moving forward with all but one family as it awaits a response from relatives of Martin Duque, a freshman student killed during the Feb. 14 massacre.
“None of us wants to be where we are, we’d all give anything to go back to Feb. 13, and the happiness and joy that was in our lives then,” said Tony Montalto, the father of Gina Montalto, a 14-year-old student killed at Stoneman Douglas. “Unfortunately, we haven’t found a way to do that yet, but we have decided to band together, try and prevent anybody else from suffering what we’ve suffered through.”
Part of picking up “the pieces of our lives” is ensuring others don’t live through such a loss, Montalto said.
The families realized their joint potential when just weeks after the school shooting they were successful in helping pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. The new law raises the age for a firearm purchase to 21, prohibits bump stocks, and established the safety commission reviewing systemic failures during the Parkland school shooting, among other things.
“While we were grieving those first two weeks we decided to band together quickly to make change quickly,” said April Schentrup, whose daughter Carmen Schentrup, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, was murdered. “We could not only support each other, but also make change.”
Schentrup, who most recently was the principal at Pembroke Pines Elementary, has been named the Broward School District’s director of school safety and security, a newly created position that became effective Wednesday. She’s looking at simple solutions, such as keeping strangers off school property, and policy changes that can help make fast and meaningful impact.
“We don’t want the wrong people to get inside the school, so if we can secure those perimeters, make sure we keep unwanted visitors off our campuses, that’s a good first step,” she said.
In addition to school safety, connecting persons who need mental health help with effective programs and creating a vetting system for firearm purchases, including universal background checks, are parts of the complex problem that need to be worked on together, both parents said.
“We want to look at this nationwide in regards to these three areas. Even though I’m working for Broward County I feel all parents want this,” Schentrup said. “They want to know when they send their child to school that they’re going to be safe, that they’re going to be protected and that we are making sure that those already in the school are also being supported through mental health screenings and support programs.”
Montalto, an airline captain, said the parents of the victims were simply “moms and dads” before the shooting and aren’t experts on these topics, but they’re looking for incremental changes that can begin to make a difference, and turning to experts who can help further their efforts. To make things happen, they need to find compromise and work with anyone offering solutions, putting politics aside, they said.
epesantes@sun-sentinel .com