Stoneman Douglas commission hears of progress on school security

The state commission investigating the Parkland school shooting opened its first hearing in more than three months Tuesday, with initial reports of progress in making schools safer since the 2018 massacre.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, said both Broward County and some other Florida school districts had implemented more effective security measures, although a lot of work remains to be done.

Broward County, for example, adopted a formal active shooter policy, he said. Although it took too long to do so, he said, that puts Broward ahead of many other Florida school districts.

“A year to get that implemented in my view is too long, but at least that is finally in place,” Gualtieri said. “There are still some districts in Florida that today do not have an active shooter response policy, so we’ve still got work to do and there’s still room to make it better than what it is.”

The commission, meeting Tuesday and Wednesday at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, planned to look at whether school districts were taking seriously the state school safety law passed last year, the state of active-shooter training at the Broward Sheriff’s Office, whether school districts continue to provide false crime statistics, whether there has been progress in addressing Broward County’s troubled 911 and emergency radio systems and several other issues.

Another area of improvement involved what are called threat assessments, which involves evaluating students who are considered at risk of doing harm.

More than year before the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre, the Broward school district had botched such an evaluation of the future shooter, Nikolas Cruz, conducted a deeply flawed behavioral threat assessment that left out numerous concerns expressed by teachers. Since then, the commission and a school district consultant found that the threat assessment process was inconsistent, badly implemented and ineffective.

“To their credit, they have taken this seriously,” Gualtieri said. “They have acted on it and recognized that this wasn’t just an isolated problem at Stoneman Douglas and they truly had a systemic problem and they are acting on it.”

The meeting is taking place until 6 p.m. Tuesday; this story will be updated.

dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com, 954-356-4535

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