IWF – Parental Choice Can Promote Safety

Almost a year after the terrible Parkland school shooting, Florida’s state security commission issued its official report, and the findings are scathing. According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel: The 458-page report by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Security Commission deals with the cascade of errors revealed in the wake of the shooting, consisting of fumbled pointers, lax school security policies and unaggressive Broward sheriff’s deputies who hung back as shots were fired. The report now goes to Gov. Rick Scott, DeSantis, Senate President Costs Galvano and Home Speaker José Oliva. … A lot of the propositions were influenced by mistakes and weak areas that emerged after the Feb. 14 massacre of 17 individuals. Commission Chairman Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri minced no words about his support for policy modifications, including equipping teachers, mentioning that

the shooter was able to re-load his weapon five times, which means< a href= "https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-stoneman-douglas-commission-report-20181231-story.html"> there were chances to stop him:”So what are we saying to individuals– we’re not going to permit you to protect yourself, we’re not going to permit you to safeguard the kids– why? Because of some ideology that we do not like weapons? Anybody who thinks they’re

going to get rid of guns is crazy … It isn’t going to happen. We have actually got to do something differently and people need to have the ability to safeguard themselves.”Keeping students safe at school includes more than arming instructors or raising spending: it starts with a commonsense commitment, as Gualtieri discussed: … numerous recommendations could have been implemented a long time ago had school safety been treated with the importance it deserved, especially by school districts.”There’s a cash problem, I give you that … but there’s a whole lot of things that don’t cost anything and

the Legislature, if these districts will not do it, ought to mandate that they implement these things and that they implement them immediately.”These suggestions consist of simply closing and locking gates (p. 42), as well as having a formal Code Red/active enemy reaction policy that is distributed all school staff (pp. 51 and 82). As the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Security Commission report kept in mind:

Even after the MSDHS shooting and the implementation of new Florida law needing specific safety measures, there stays non-compliance and an absence of seriousness to enact standard safety concepts in Florida’s K-12 schools. … The District did not have and still does not have a formal, written and shared

Code Red policy (pp. 1 and 51). That law is the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Security Act, a$400 million prepare for securing(or “hardening “) school campuses, improving psychological health services, and broadening the Aaron Feis Guardian Program to train and equip volunteer instructors and school staff( see< a href="http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/CommissionReport.pdf"> pp. 315ff; Senate Bill 7026; and here). The law included several questionable functions,such as arming teachers, raising the legal gun-purchasing age to 21, in addition to producing a central federal government database that combines individual-level records from law enforcement and social services with personal social networks pages, which raises various privacy concerns. Florida’s HOPE Scholarship program provides a better option for keeping trainees safe at school because it empowers parents to act without having to wait on permission from school authorities. Any trainees who’s been subjected to a wide variety of school security occurrences is eligiblefor a scholarship to another public or private school of their moms and dads ‘option. Not just does the program give families much safer alternatives immediately, it likewise introduces powerful incentives for schools and districts to take swift, useful steps to keep all trainees safe every year– or run the risk of losing them to safer schools. Florida could enhance its HOPE Scholarship program, in addition to the rewards to make schools more secure, by permitting parents to transfer their kids if school officials fail to carry out basic active-shooter avoidance policies and practices. Such commonsense steps could be taken tight now, and that is why< a href ="http://www.iwf.org/publications/2411702/Policy-Paper-No-34:-Safety-Opportunity-Scholarships- (SOS)"> Security Opportunity Scholarship programs are so important.