Members of the state commission investigating the Parkland school shooting on Tuesday debated the pros and cons of rating school districts on how well they are implementing policies to keep children safe.
The discussion was part of the commission’s first hearing in more than three months, which began with 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 code red policy, addressing emergency situations such as those involving an active shooter, in which students needs to stay locked in classrooms. 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.”
During a presentation by Damien Kelly, director of the Office of Safe Schools at the Florida Department of Education, commissioners learned that fewer than half the districts in the state have implemented a “guardian program” to arm school staff members, including teachers.
Gualtieri criticized reluctant districts for putting their discomfort with guns on campus over the safety of students.
“It would cost $400 million to put a cop on every campus, and even if that money fell out of the sky, they [the personnel numbers] don’t exist,” he said. “This needs to be viewed through a lens of not what you would like in a perfect world, but you can live with. I can’t live with dead kids.”
Other statistics provided by Kelly painted a broad picture of compliance with the state school safety law passed last year.
One out of every five districts have a uniformed officer present at all times at every school when school is in session. Guardian training has only taken place in 25 of 67 districts. All but four districts have a written active shooter policy — the others have policies that are either in development or go by another name.
Other seemingly common-sense measures that are not being implemented drew the ire of commissioners who lost children during the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — fewer than half the districts in the state say they have an “opaque covering” for every classroom door with a window, which would block a shooter from seeing inside a classroom.
“On the second floor, nobody died,” said commission member Max Schachter, whose son Alex was a Stoneman Douglas victim. Gunman Nikolas Cruz bypassed classrooms when he could not see inside them.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, a member of the commission, recommended giving every district a grade. “We need to require by law that districts put the grade on their stationery stating ‘we are a failure at keeping your children safe.’”
Schachter and Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed at Stoneman Douglas, agreed that a rating system would encourage districts to comply with safety practices required or recommended in the law.