Transcripts For CSPAN2 Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing On Gun Violence And School... 20240714

School safety against targeted violence. I want to welcome everybody to the hearing room. I actually want to thankour witnesses for taking the time for your testimony. And in particular i want to give a shout out to max and tom and your families and the other families of the families for attending here and for just your unbelievable dedication turning your tragedy into hopefully some positive action that can prevent tragedies for other families, its remarkable what so many of the families have done in reaction to so many of these tragedies which date back to about 1998 is where we had the first directed attack, numbers of 56. I know in your testimony youre talkingabout 710 shootings since columbine in 1999. Columbine, 13 people were killed, 12 students, one teacher, 21injured, sandy hook in 2012, 26 killed. Two were injured and parkland, at Marjorie Stoneman douglas school, 17 killed and 17 injured. Anthe death and casualty toll is simply unbelievable, quite honestly. I grew up in the 50s and 60s. We were concerned about nuclear holocaust. We hold drills and talk ourselves under our desk. We never had to worry about somebody entering our school and opening fire so this is a tragedy in terms of lives lost and people injured, the familiesdestroyed. But its a tragedy from the standpoint of the psychological effect on our nation, on our states and our schools and our children and our families so what im hoping this hearing will be about is just to take a look at the thoughtful recommendations of so many of these commissions that have been established afterwards, both and federal government with the help of parents and families that have experienced these tragedies. I want to ask the question to what extent do these recommendations, these commonsense obvious recommendations, to what extent have they been . Implemented and if they are e not, and i know they are not universallyimplemented, whats the holdup and what can we do to make sure we take some of these obvious , relatively simple actions as at least a first step to if not completely prevent these things from happening in the future, at least mitigate the casualties when one of these attacks occur but i think moving forward what i want the result from this Committee Hearing to be is lets again take a look at all the recommendations, lets find out what is common. What do we agree on . Its something this committee oodoes a good job on, theres all kinds of things gary is wrong about what this committee is good at doing is we identify a problem and figure out what do we agree on, whats a common sense solution we agree on. To kind of set the visions, the differences aside to be brought up when its possible to do so. I want to examine what are the most effective actions we can takethat we agree on. What are the facets and the easiest to implement . Part of that would be whats the most Cost Effective to question mark i go back to after 9 11, i think the most Cost Effective and the most effective actiontaken after 9 11 was we pardoned the cockpit door. With all the other security re theater and tsa and we spend billions but the most t effective thing is we hardened the cockpit door so lets make sure in schools where at least doing that. I really do, because this doesnt have a lot of legislative jurisdiction but there may be some that we can consider so we want to do everything we can do as part of this committee in addition to holding this hearing to highlight the issue and examine these recommendations so with that i will turn it over to senator peters. Thank you mister chairman for holding this hearing. This is an extremely important and difficult conversation. Theres no question that schools must be safe places for children to learn and to grow and every single life lost in a School Shooting is an unspeakable tragedy. As adults and as policymakers, our number one responsibility is to protect our children. And were failing. I want to recognize the many survivors that we have with us today, especially mister Max Schachter and tom hoyer for joining us as witnesses and thank you for your courage and your action t. I cant even begin to grasp the incomprehensible pain of losing a child to gunviolence , but i know that i must and we must honor the memory of those who are no longer with us by taking action to stop these preventable tragedies. Im grateful to you both and to sheriff gaultieri and doctor temkin for helping the committee better understand how we can protect children in our schools and work towards ensuring no other families have to endure the loss of a loved one to is senseless violence in schools. Strengthening safety in our schools is not a partisan anissue and i look forward to a productive discussion on the actions we can take to make cool rocampuses more secure, improve First Responder capabilities in an emergency and most importantly, stop these shootings before they ever happen. Todays conversation will be about solutions and we want to leave here with a clear roadmap for addressing this problem. But we cant forget exactly who we are doing this for. For alex, for luke , for the hundreds of children killed or injured in their schools. For the families, students, teachers and staff whose worlds have been irrevocably changed by this violence and for the billions of students who will be entering classrooms this fall. Thank you for being here, i look forward to your testimony and your discussion and mister chairman, my office has received 32 letters of support for our discussion today on a wide variety of topics and id like to enter those questions into our official record. Without objection, asked for my written Opening Statement at the end of the record, we have a letter from senator rubio entered in the record as well. I want to recognize representative congressman ted deutch congressman bob parkland florida. We obviously offer all of you are condolences and recognize how completely inadequate that is. We have a unique situation where your former governor, who established this commission and appointed and asked many of you to be involved is here and senator scott would like to say a few words to introduce some of the members of the audience. Ive asked him to read the list of those killed in the parkland shooting then we will have a moment of silence ti after he does that so senator scott. First i want to thank senator johnson and peters for doing this. What they said is actually really true in this committee, people do Work Together and work hard to get things done and theres a lot of issues to deal with up here. Theres probably not a more important issue than the safety of our kids and grandkids. And i explained sons and i think about their safety all thetime. So i want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. This is an easy discussion, it was easy to deal with the aftermath but nothing like what these families have done this february marks the oneyear anniversary Marjorie Stoneman douglas high School Shooting in parkland claimed the lives of 17 innocent victims. Theres not a daythat goes by that i dont think about that day. The amazing people that were lost at the hands of the madman. One thing that happened is any families i spent time with and you can just every day you still feel their pain. Id like to thank the families, students and loved ones for the victims here otoday. Tom, gina, bill and debbie, thank all of you, tony, thank you for being here. Lets go through a little background, alex, and by the way, if you can almost turn it and if they just gave this morning but you can go and see the pictures of these kids and you can, i can tell you in the last year and a half you get to know them just by all the stories you hear. Alex was 14 years old, he played trombone in the band at the school, it was vocal in seeking changes in school and served on the High School Public safety commission. Tom and ginas son luke was only 15. He was a sweet young man loved playingsports. His, a lot of these parents have been leading efforts to change and i was, gina was when we saw in the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety, she was there with you. Tony, if you stand up so they recognize you. Tonys daughter gina was 14 and a freshman at Marjorie Stoneman douglas. She was a member ofthe schools Winter Garden team, she was known to be a great dancer and infectious smile who made friends everywhere she went. Tony is the president of the organization founded by the parents of the victims and i attended some of their funerals and your heart goes out to all ofthem and gina, i should have had you stand up. Gina, i should recognize you but gina is toms wife and theyre just a sweet family so thank you for being here. Gina has become a good friend of my chief of staff. Phil, if you will end up. Daughter carmen wanted to become a medical researcher and find a cure for als. Shewas 15 or 16 years old, both phil and his wife april have been incredible activists nationwide. Thank you, debbie. Debbies husband chris was a loving father and he served as the Athletic Director and wrestling coach at Marjorie Stoneman douglas and made an impact on the lives of so many of hisstudents. And his legacy lives on with the essex scholarship which helps further the education of student athletes and this is a story about what chris did run and endanger a child without any ability to do it, no weapon or anything tosave these kids, its remarkable inso thanks for being here. So let me justread off the rest of the names. This is always been hard. Alicia our god, martin do k, current vice, to me gutenberg. Cannot longer in. What keynote loveour , ileana petty, i had met, actually met her family because after we had the hurricane, her brother was just up here the other day pass, he was going on his twoyear mission, the dad was working out in Everglades City to do cleanup and i remember meeting them before this, they were happy. Metal pollock, Helena Ramsey and meadowsdad has been, you see him a lot on television. And then peter lang. Every one of these families, its just a horrible story. This just wonderful family members that these families liveshave been changed forever so theres no question we got to figure out how to change this. Remarkable strength and dedication you all have shown in the aftermath of such an unspeakable tragedy is inspiring. As weve seen many times, solutions after tragedy unfortunately lost in politics. But theres a lot of reasons why this happened but we are through that in florida and nuhopefully we can continue together to make our schools taper. Sheriff gaultieri, we got right Law Enforcement officers and sheriff gaultieri to somebody on that after i got elected in 2010 becerra is, he is very dedicated member of the sheriffs statewide Sheriffs Association whos been dedicated in getting that legislation passed. But he is what we did was we put together a group of right after it happened, it happened on wednesday. By friday we had put together a group of people who Work Together, one group of educators, one was Mental Health, one group was Law Enforcement and by tuesday night we came up with what we thought we should do and by friday we made a proposal and fortunately we were in session so with three weeks we got not exactly what we all would have passed , some things were a little bit different but we had good legislation passed but sheriff gaultieri, hes got great family, hes a great friend and hes a dedicated public servant. I dont know how he works the hours that he does but hes shown leadership for our city when we needed it and its because of people like bob that we are at a 48 year low in our crime rate so i used the rag as customer, governor, youre supposed to brag as governor, we did 1. 7 million jobs and were at a 48 year low in our crime rate but i worked together to pass the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School safety act with the goal of preventing this tragedy again. The goal is d ithis never ever happens again. We established the commission to work to identify issues and they did an incredible job. Sheriff gaultieri led it but we had i believe it was 15 people or so on it but and ryan petty and another parent on the commission this commission did a good job and it put out good information and theyre still doing things that are going to have a positive impact so i think what youre all going to your today, youre going to hear about people that have really gone above and beyond to change things. Unfortunately you cant bring back these lives , but i think everyone of us, especially when we think about this we think about our children and grandchildren and we dont want this toever happen again in our country and i think its important all of us take responsibility to do everything we can to makesure this doesnt happen again. I was heartened about the report from the grand jury on the progress of implementation, Safety Measures by certain florida school. Its unbelievably disappointing when , im sure the sheriff will talk about this, when we have to talk about what we need to do and then you see people that for whatever reason dont take it seriously. They dont think its ever going to happen at their school. Today im sending a letter to school superintendent, Board Members and administrators demanding action, im disappointed in response im confident that when we talk about this a little bit breakfast, were not going to and i think the way thingsare going to happen , long term. A lot of us, all of us want. O be here we just cant have more important things than what youre going to talk about but this has to be a committee. Im going to have to go to Armed Services or a mandatory meeting area so i think for being here and mayou for your testimony and i think everybody, every senator up here your deeply at this doesntveever happen again. You senator scott, it would be appropriate if we would have a moment of silence in memory out of respect to those who lost their lives and for those whose lives have always been forever altered by these tragedies. It is the tradition of this committee to swear and witnesses so if you all and anthen raiseyour hand. Do you swear the testimony you will get before this committee will be the truth, older than nothing but the truth, love you god mark thank you. Senator scott said there are a lot of competing committee meetings, i know. Senator romney and others will haveto go out, dont take that as a sign of disrespect. Its just this place doesnt work. But anyway, harper b is mister Max Schachter, max is a cofounder and ceo of the school for alex, max has advocated for School Safety and security at the highest levels of federal government is his son alex was killed in marjorie solomon Douglas High School on february 14 2018 and i was trying talking to max before thehearing and hes got a rap sheet but it is , if you see the list of his activities, since he lost his son. Its just unbelievable. How much time and energy is devoted to this so max, i look forward to your testimony area. You senator, my name is Max Schachter, my son alex was one of 17 people brutally murdered Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School last year after i buried my son, my next priority was to make sure my other three tchildren were safe in their schools area and i traveled the country and came to realize that in all of the hundred 39,000 k12 schools in this country, each principal after now become an expert in door locks, access control, cameras, etc. But it made no sense at each school had to go and reinvent the wheel area the idea that crystallized for me was the need to create national School Safety best practices at the federal level. Those best practices will be housed on a clearinghouse website so that all schools are a onestop shop for all the most relevant and important School Safety information. I was pleased to see this idea highlighted in resident trumps federal commission on School Safety report last year. And i am extremely encouraged the department of Homeland Security is moving forward to create this house in fact, they are convening their first Meeting Library next week. We know that we cannot prevent the hundred percent of the school mass murderers but we know that we can absolutely mitigate a lot of the rest to students, teachers and staff when they do happen. Every school can do things today that can improve School Safety and many of these things are basics. That cost little or no money. Chairman johnson, i really want to commend you for your commitment to focusing on Tactical Solutions can save lives right now. And for shining the spotlight on that through this hearing that youre holding today. Ri there are two main reasons the National School Security Prices as continued with no end in sight. The first is that we do not dimplement lessons that we have been painfully learning for two decades and two, we are not being honest to parents and communities about the real situation with safety in our schools. On the first point, we do not implement Lessons Learned from dozens of incidents that have tragically taken many, many lives. The state of virginia is a rare exception. After the Virginia Tech massacre, virginia implementedassessment teams and all their schools. A youth United States secret service is National Assessment center model and they have not had a School Shooting sense. That is why i support the eagles. Unfortunately, no other state besides florida has followed suit and implemented assessment teams and all their schools. And after columbine all responding officers were required to rapidly deploy directly to the threat. Yet in parkland deputies waited outside for 11 minutes while children and staff were being slaughtered in their classrooms. Parkland respond to radio old world were not interoperable, delaying help for victims. What teams had to resort to hand signals to avoid shooting each other because their radios fail and as a country we have a committee to solving the communication problem, we cant force all agency use a single radio system that we can make it possible for them to communicate no matter which system intheyre using. After sandy,each school should have trained their students and staff how to respond to active shooters. Sadly, many did not read during the 20 17th and 13 school year, Marjorie Stoneman douglas did not hold a single code red drill here so students and staff did not know what to do when the murderer started firing an ar 15 into classrooms and killing their classmates. No staff member called a code red for three minutes after the shooting had already started and by then, all 17 people were dead including my littleboy alex. The second sad reality was most people dont realize is cool though not being truthful about the violence on their campuses. For the years 14 through 2017, Marjorie Stoneman douglas reported to the state general bullying, hero harassment, bureaucrats and many other zeros. Not just Broward County that is inaccurately reporting these incidents, this is pervasive across the country. The result is a false sense of security which leads to complacency and implement think School Safety best practices. On College Campuses the federally we are asked proposes penalties for inaccurate reporting of campus Crime Statistics but in k12 there was no such requirement. The result is that when you go online to look at school ratings, many of them including Marjorie Stoneman douglas and a rating. Academics are important, but the children do not come home to their families and staff dont come home, nothing else matters. At a rating Marjorie Stoneman douglas had had nothing to do with safety of that institution. Theres no School Safety Rating System to inform parents and teachers of whether or not their school has implemented the best practices to prevent and mitigate the number of casualties during the school attack. Schools should not be able to get an a rating like Marjorie Stoneman douglas did if theyve never held a code red drill through the entire school year. They should not be rewarded if they cannot train their teachers and staff what to do during an active assailant emergency. The School Safety Rating System existed, it would influence change nationwide. The car industrys Rating System has improved car safety and reduce fatalities. Before you buy a car, you review their safety and crash test rating for parents, theres nothing. No way to know if your child will is safe or not. Its been 20 years since columbine and children continue to be murdered in their classrooms. We know the next school mass murder is already out there. The next gun that he will use e is already out there. It is not a question of if, its a question of when. We know what can be done to prevent it and we know what must be done to mitigate the risks ofmore lives being lost i hope this committee will help get us where we need to be in thank you for your commitment mister chairman and senator peters and i look forward to your question. Our next witness is mister tom hoyer, tom serves as treasurer who advocate for Public Safety reforms and it was formed by the families of those killed in Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School attack including tom who lost his son luke. Good morning chairman johnson, Ranking Member peters and members of the committee, thank you for having me here. My name is tom hoyer and im the treasurer of the National Association of families for state school. Parkland was founded by the families of the children and spouses murdered in the Parkland School massacre and im here today on behalf of our organization. We are fundamentally Nonpartisan Group , the safety of our kids and teachers and schools is not a fpolitical issue. We are willing to work with anyone we shared our goal for state schools and appreciate your decision to hold this hearing. Im here today because i lost my youngest son luke on in 2018. He was one of the17 wonderful souls murdered at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in parkland florida. My son was one of the first to die. Police tell me he felt the impact of the bullet before you heard the shots. One moment hes standing outside the classroom looking forward to the end of the school day, the next moment is on the floor unable to move and dying. Many times ive wondered what his last thoughts were. I think about my wife gina who gave birth to luke 15 years earlier and who had to watch the casket close on her youngest son. This is my story, there are16 others just like it in parkland. The murder of beloved spouses and children at school was devastating. Our families are forever changed, our communities are forever changed. The trauma on all of the dunes, teachers and First Responders. Our experience in parkland has led us to conclude theres no single solution that can solve this conflicts problem, what stand up for parkland advocate for three key goals exceed during the school campus, improving Mental Health support and responsible firearms ownership. The first element of our platform is bringing people together around the idea of securing school campus. Our schools need a clearinghouse of best practices they can use as a tool and are country needs minimum School Safety standards such as a single point of entry on campus. We also need to explore federal funding for School Security enhancements through natural infrastructure bills. The next element of our platform is improved Mental Health screening programs i. We need funding to promote Suicide Prevention programs in more than two thirds of mass shooters are suicidal. We need congressional action to relax regulations so that schools, Law Enforcement and Mental Health professionals can share information. My sons killer was known to the school, known to the Sheriffs Office Mental Health agencies and the fbi. He was noted as angry, violent and a potentially aldangerous person. My son and 16 others are dead because these agencies never shared information they never connected the dots. And in order to effectively address these potential risks, we have to Fund Research into threat u assessment tools and practices. The eagles act which is bipartisan doesexactly that. We urge you to support that legislation. The last component of our platform is responsible firearms ownership. We must find ways to keep firearms out of the hands of those who should not have them. This starts with enforcement of existing laws. Another important step is storage of firearms at home. An additional tool as extreme Risk Protection orders or red flag laws which empower family members or Law Enforcement to get a court order and temporarily remove firearms in a dangerous situation. Finally we need comprehensive background checks including sales online. These three goals securing the school campus, improving Mental Health screening and support programs and responsible firearms ownership can stem the tide on School Shootings. Last year we took important first steps on School Safety with the bipartisan passage stock School Violence act. Additionally although we dont agree with all of its recommendations, the recently issued report of the federal commission on School Safety is one of our governments most commented pieces on School Safety. This is not an academic discussion. Kids and teachers have been dying. School starts in less than two months. Now is the time to build on the progress we made last year. Please dont let another anniversary of my sons death and the death of 16 others passed without concrete steps toward making our kids and teachers safe. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. We appreciate your decision to advance the discussion on School Safety. Thank you tom, our next witness is mister bob gaultieri, shira gaultieri served as sheriff of Pinellas County since 2011 and the Vice President of the florida Sheriffs Association and on the board of directors of the major county sheriffsof america. Rick scott appointed him to serve as the chairman of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School station. Regarding what happened at Stoneman Douglas in 2018 and made recommendations on how to improve School Safety. It is debatable whether the incident Stoneman Douglas was entirely avoidable but what is not avoidable in my view based on the evidence is whether the harm could have been mitigated. Simply put shooting and not have to be as bad as it was. 34 people 51were shot and or killed in three minutes 51 seconds in building 12 of the Stoneman Douglas campus. With 24 of those shot or killed in one minute 44 seconds on the first for a loan. Miss intervention nd opportunities, ineffective safety on the part of the school and thateffective Law Enforcement response exhibited to the magnitude of this tragedy. At the time of the shooting the Broward County Public Schools do not have an active shooter response policy. There hadbeen no active Shooter Drills on the Stoneman Douglas campus on the year before the shooting. There had been only one minimal one hour of training or school staff aiand that occurred just a fewweeks before the shooting. There had been no formal training for students. Gates at the Stoneman Douglas campus were left open and unattended, classroom doors unlocked and teachers and staff lack adequate Communication Infrastructure. In fact, the shooter shot and or killed all but two of his victims for the first staff member on the Stoneman Douglas campus called a code red to alert others of the active shooting occurring that day. People simply did not know what todo or how to do it because there were no policies, no drills and little to no training. Please keep in mind that this was the state of School Security in rowan county florida. The Second Largest School District in the thirdlargest date 19 years after columbine and six years after sandy hook. As the Law Enforcement response, the schools as are hosted by outside, hiding in ki a place of personal safety while the shooter shot and or killed 10 people on the third floor. The sro never went into the building that day and he had for 40 minutes for leaving the area. Several other Sheriff Deputies by outside the school despitehearing gunshots and they do not enter the school in an effort to save lives. The sro and several deputies have been fired as they should have been and the sro has been criminally charged. Weve made improvements on School Safety but we have a ways to go. As much of the talk of the day is on prevention which should be the goal, the immediate emphasis and urgency must be on harm mitigation and there is a difference. The hard thing to say but its the reality is that it will happen again and the question is when and where the most pressing question, the big question is what are we doing differently today to drive a different outcome that one then what happened that Marjorie Stoneman douglas on february 14. Because we must have a different outcome. 34 people shot and or killed lain three minutes 51 seconds is unacceptable. Today there is not full compliance with the laws in florida and the best practices that make our schools and i dont believe this void is limited only to florida schools. I believe noncompliance is caused by a complacency and attitude that cant happen here. We are 20 years postcolumbine. The Broward County School District ground zero for this mass killing just passed its first ever active shooter response policy in february 2019. Or than a year after the Stoneman Douglas shooting or the Broward County School District to enact that policy and that is unacceptable. The sense of urgency and an immediate focus on the main tenets of harm mitigation and those are identifying the plan, communicating thethreat and reacting to the threat. All schools must have affected active shooter response policy. They must train their personnel to identify threats and empower all personnel to communicate a threat, have adequate Communication Infrastructure for all atstudents can receive messages of a breath and there must be regularly conducted drills so that students and staff know how best to react to a breath. We cannot be here 20 years from now like we are today 20 years postcolumbine talking about the boys in the most voice concepts of School Safetythat should have been implemented years ago. Most if not all of these School Strategies cost little to nothing to implement. Only require the will of the atdecisionmaker to ensure it happens and unfortunately that has not occurred across the board. The accountability for those not immediately implementing the basic School Safety necessities. I encourage you to use your power and require any School District receiving federal funding to demonstrate compliance certain basic and core components as a requirement to receiving federal money. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today forward to fleshing out how we can do a better job of making sure what must be a daily priority across this country and that is that our kids are as safe as they can be. Parents have aright to expect when they send their kids to school in the morning they come home alive in the afternoon and we need to meet that expectation. Our final witnesses doctor debra temkin, Senior Program area director for child strategy and serves as a Senior Advisor to the federal Assistance Center devoted to Student Health and School Safety. Prior to her work at child trends, doctor temkin directed the initiative on bullying prevention. German johnson, Ranking Member peters and members of the committee, thank you for holding this hearing to identify effective ways to students save in schools. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child or surviving a School Shooting. As a parent, in addition to a researcher, i share my fellow commitment to making sure our schools are safe. The tragedies at parklandand elsewhere shocked our system. We can and we must do more. Ive dedicated my career fyto identifying evidencebased strategies to improve cool health and safety and through that work i offer three recommendations. First, maintain the decadelong trajectory of School Safety initiatives that encourage a10 communities to address a full spectrum of issues that contribute to School Violence. The research is clear, to keep students safe we must reviseour overall wellbeing. Preventing School Violence acquires an investment in building a positive School Climate as well as building skills to build healthy relationships. Several federal investments in safe schools were built on this research and showed significant improvements in School Safety area beyond Competitive Grant Program rules and policies that support them have fundamentally shifted toward making Student Wellness a priority. This includes expansion under the every student succeed to include an indicator of School Quality and success and upon the Student Success in academic enrollments Grant Program. School violence has gone down in the past 20 years. The percentage of ninth and 12th graders decreased from seven percent in 1999 to under four percent in 2017. This group over the same time period, physical fights also decrease 14 percent to 18 and a half percent. It is more difficult to ascertain the trend in School Shooting incident in part because while devastating, they areocstatistically rare occurrences. Pralthough progress has been made, there is much more we can do. No community ever have to inexperience a School Shooting. Three movements are bringing us closer to this goal. First increased awareness of the prevalence of adverse experiences and their potential for resulting trauma. Second, further integration of social commercial and academic earning and third, the bridging of school and Community Resources through integrated student support. My second recommendation is to limit strategies that can harm students and communities. It may seem logical adding Security Technology or additional Law Enforcement to prevent the School Shooting but the research we have is mixed at best. Security measures are designed the bad guys out but history shows us that the vast majority of School Shootings are perpetrated by current students at the school. Students whoknow the security procedures as well as the blind spot. The effectiveness of schoolbased Law Enforcement access controls, metal detectors and other measures on improving School Safety have not been well researched. We do know however that many hoschools have experienced active shooter incidents have security measures in place. Certain forms of security may help, that pose little risk to students, these include strategies such as identification procedures or lockdown drills which are different than active Shooter Drill. Emerging evidence to guess that more intensive security measures can lead to unintended consequences including increased levels of fear among students and staff , decreased perceptions of School Safety and increase refers to the criminal Justice System for minor offenses and particularly for low income students, reduce academic achievement. Active Shooter Drills are concerning. These drills use actors to portray a School Shooter using realistic guns and plastic bullets. We do not know whether these student drills work and in addition, researchers and educators are raising concerns that drills a traumatized School Community or desensitize students to the seriousness of an attack. We need to know much more about the security measures before risking our childrens wellbeing. My final recommendation is a mechanism to assess the impact of School Safety strategies. There is still much to learn about keeping cool safe. Research allows us to understand whether finite resources are being sent effectively and where improvements can be made. In fiscal year 2018 runs were reallocated away from the comprehensive School Safety initiative at a National Institute of justice which was the only dedicated funding stream to support School Safety research. Without such Research Support we will debate the issues raised today. Ill close with this. Our children go to school to learn. When our children are afraid, and when we tell them they should be afraid installing metal detectors and requiring Security Officers and active Shooter Drills, it becomes harder for them to learn. Making school safe is not about turning schools and fortresses to keep the bad guys out. Our childrens taking is paramount and that safety must start from withinthe school itself. To truly make schools safe we must prioritize trust and provide the social and academic support that prevents violence and helps our kids win. Doctor temkin, im going to yield my questions to senatorscott. Thank you for being here. And for, its hard to talk about it. Just listening to it is hard. One person i want to recognize is hunter pollock, i dont know if you can stand up. He lost his sister meadow who was 18 at the time and she died trying to save another student so thank you for being here. Sheriff gaultieri, what do you thinkis the most important take away from your commission . I think in my remarks is that it was, didnt have to be as bad as it was. The harm could have been mitigated, if there wasnt complacency and people have done what they should have and learned lessons from what happened 20 yearsago. The law for response was ineffective. When you have a different at a particular school haddone no drills , had done one minimal training, people didnt know what to do or how to do it. It was i think shocking to us as we uncovered andlooked at the facts and the evidence. And there is still to much complacency. And not enough being done and they say they seriously, but they say the proof is in the pudding and the proof is in the actions, not what you say and to this day is not enough being done. When i appear before the board in february, in the last week of february, it wasnt until the week before that, it took them a year to pass an active shooter policy. There are other districts in the last couple of months that still dont have active shooter response policies districts not complying with the law to have a holistic , schools that dont have assessment teams for lack of compliance with the basic tenants is one of the most shocking and appalling to me that we uncovered. Sheriff gaultieri, we got 67 School Districts in florida and i dont know if every state is set up this way every county has an elected school board and they have a lot of autonomy and then probably about half of them are elected superintendents and half are appointed by the school board so that got a lot of autonomy. Everything that we all worked hard to get past is not getting implemented by the state, it has to get implement it locally so whats your experience so far . Whos the best, who is the biggest disappointment in implementing, just forget what everybodys trying to do is come up with the right ideas, just doing the things that we had to do . There are some that are doing well. I can tell you as an example one that i think is doing well and i was from there before i came here which is elpensacola and escambia county. I think they stepped up and the superintendent get it and they implement the right policies and procedures o. Other counties, probably the ones that are most problematic as we sit here today were seeing the most voids as far as compliance would be in south florida. Miamidade, broward, palm beach and there are some others. Recently until a couple months ago in Orange County they were not complying with the requirements there be a safe School Officer on every campus. So the legislation we pass required there be a Public Safetyofficer at every school. And so what were they doing . Its a requirements of state law and we provided funding for this. You provided as the governor and legislature provided 67 million and what the law said was that there has to be assigned to every charter, elementary, middle and high school a safe School Officer and they interpreted the word assigned to me that assigned on paper and they dont have to be there. This is the type of manipulation and disingenuous approach and its maddening. Its upsetting because once the legislative body supposed to do, this congress or a state legislature can mark you put words and clearly the intent was there be a good guy with a gun on every campus you had lawyers who were part of the problem and i say that as a lawyer ngbecause theyre not doing service to the people there representing , when they interpret words of a side and they go through these machinations and say assigned can be interpreted to mean you dont have to have somebody there. Tell that one of these parents is having to knock on the door because they had one deputy or six campuses because they didnt follow the law. Its not right and this is the type of attitude that have to change area and. Talk about the fact that they had done, if they had done a active Shooter Drill at Marjorie Stoneman douglas, where would the students have gone when they knew there was a shooter in the room and where did the students go . Its so simple. Unfortunately they had not identified any of the safe spaces or what some people call hard corners in classrooms and simply teachers and the staff didnt know what to do or howto do it. For those that did try and get the kids into those safe spaces for the hard corners in the classroom , they were full of stuff meaning bookshelves and desks and immovable objects. And its a hard thing to sayhi, in fact its very hard thing to say but gets died on the line because they couldnt get into the hard corners because they were being pushed out by others because they were so full. There were two kids who were unable to get into one of those safe areas and they were hiding behind a tv set and filing cabinet at the other end of the classroom. Tv sets and filing cabinets dont stop ar 15 rounds. If they had been able to get in those safe areas or hard corners, this armor would have been mitigated and it wouldnt have been as bad because shooter that they never went into any one classroom. The only shot people he could see, line of sight. Only shot people in hallways so when you look through the doors and the windows and the doors and he saw people, he shot them. If they were in the hard corners because it worked on the second floor, the shooter was on the second floor 441 seconds. He didnt shoot or kill anybody on the second floor because they had an opportunity to respond appropriately. So what we teach works. The first floor, 24 people shotand or killed, third floor, 10 people shot or killed, second floor, nobody. So by the third floor, did they know there was a shooter know what was going on and how long have you been there . The third floor initially treated it as a fire drill. And what i meant was some of your staff and chairman johnson, i showed them some of the photos and if anybody received the photos of the third floor, it was walltowall shoulder to shoulder kids because nobody communicated anything to them other than it was a fire drill because the fire Expression System was activated and nobody communicated so the first floor i got caught off guard, for they heard the gunshots. Thirdfloor shooter arrived on third floor at the time he arrived on the floor he had over 200 ar 15 rounds left it was walltowall, older shoulder kids and we be having a much different discussion and itwould be worse in vegas. Because of the lack of communication, because of the lack of training, because of the lack of policies, because of the lack of so much , it was as bad as it is and it could have been worse. I know my time is up whats frustrating is that there a lot of whether its the fbi, i dont know if you want to talk about, the fbi had two incidents before this happened so i love this government for eight years, and five Mass Shootings and in every case they fbi had prior warnings. Whos been held accountable at the fbi, 30 days ahead of time not passing on this tip to the fbi, to the hotline and not passing it on to i guess it would have been the miami office have you heard of anybody being held accountable mark. No. Nobody. All they hadto do was pass it on. Makeone phone call, send an email and nothing happened. And nobodys being held accountable. Its disgusting. So how do we know if anythings changed . We dont. Thanks for being here. Thank you, senator peters. Thank you for all your testimony, powerful testimony. Doctor temkin, in your testimony you stated cool shootings are the extreme end of the continuum of violence so i want to talk a little bit about some of the evidence high net statement as we try to drill down on evidencebased solutions. What does the data tell us about who the perpetrators of the School Shootings are likely to be . Unfortunately there is no one profile and this is directly from the fbi, having examined several of the previousSchool Shooting incidents. Previous School Shootings have been popular, theyve also been loaners. Sugars have been female and male. We cant necessarily say theres any one particular profile is going to lead to someone becoming a School Shooter but there are warning signs and risks and there are individuals as well as contextual risks towards School Violence. We know that when communities have increased levels of trust, students are not likely to bring weapons to school and they are much more likely to report to School Officials when they suspect that theres a threat from one of their peers. At wyeth important for us to focus in on building a positive School Climate as a way for prevention and let me be clear, i am not saying we should not invest in School Security measures that only one part of a broader effort to actually create safe schools and we need to make sure that as were implementing safe school measures that theyre not going to cause harm for children. Are these perpetrators of School Shootings, are they outsiders or are they folks from within the school . The vast majority of School Shooters have come from within the school, either current students are as in the case of parkland a former student. These are students who would know what they are doing for School Security and if they are determined to do something about school probably would find a way around. At wyeth important for us to focus on prevention as well as securing our school. If there from the school and they may no Safety Measures or they may no drill , i think is what youre saying, and how do we Design Systems given that, what your recommendation . I think we need to continue doing things to help secure the school but i thinke. We have to really invest in actually trying to get to the root causes of the violence. We need to help students identify challenges and provide support. That is the beer he behind assessments which says that when theres a viable threat, we need to identify what those challenges are and find those support that are going to prevent him from carrying out thosethreats. Mister schachter, id like to acknowledge first your vision and the work of the establishment of the federal clearinghouse for back practices that will benefit all schools and you talked a rgreat deal about that in your Opening Statement and i appreciate that and department of Homeland Security along with federal partners will be releasing this report in the next few months , hopefully sooner rather than later my question is what are you specifically watching for as the dhs clinic this clearinghouse and are there specific aspects that you believe are most critical for us to use as a tool in your hoping to see and best practices mark. On july 30 will be our first meeting and were inviting over three dozen different stakeholders from all different aspects , Mental Health, Law Enforcement , superintendents , everyone. All the stakeholders need to be at the table so that we can down and come up with National Tool safety best practices. There are Common Sense Solutions that Lessons Learned that came out of columbine, sandy look at it now parkland that need to be implemented and so if we have everybody d,agreeing in half by, im hoping that once we established these best practices, it will be put up on a federal website and then ithat will be implemented through all School Districts across the country but thats my main concern is that we need to ensure that School Districts about these best practices as soon as possible and not let another day go by where Lessons Learned will save and mitigate lives and prevent these school tragedies dontget implemented. And hopefully, once we have these best practices, theyre going to be tied to the grant dollars because thats a major problem right now. Will give you an example, Broward County has half 1 million to implement analytic cameras last year and they didnt even have a formal active assailant response policy. Nt in a Marjorie Stoneman douglas Public Safety commission that im on, we develop here so tear one would be lowcost, nocost measures and every school can implement no matter if its a school in iowa for a school in miami, they should implement those and then tears two, three and four would be more expensive and longer term implementation so your school should not be implemented a year for strategy, in other words analytic cameras they had done the basics, they y have installed a formal active assailant response policy so once we have those best practices, they need to be dtied to the grant dollars to ensure compliance. Mister hoyer, you discussed the role that the us secret Service National threat Assessment Center has played in advancing research by threat assessment teams, Mister Schachter, you discussed that as well inyour testimony. Mister schachter as well, what role should assessment teams play in the overall landscape . I think its a central role. It is one of theprevention measures. In our situation, the shooter had around 69 interactions with school. He had 21 calls from the police. Numerous sessions with the local Mental Health agency. I cant help but think it months or years before we had only done assessment on this shooter, that my son would still be here. I think its critically important to step in and try to help those individuals. But also, if you can know they are and the over them appropriately. Mister schachter, would you like to add anything mark. Absolutely, its critical. We have identified a major gap with these information silos. You have this violent individual from age 3 had tremendous amounts of disciplinary action inside the school and then you had all these lawenforcement interactions. These were two silos that were never connected so assessment teams that were instituted after Virginia Tech and now after florida argue the down and proactive, not reactive and i would recommend assessment teams in every state, in every school. They will save lives so thats why i support both the eagles which will reauthorize the National Threat Assessment Center inside secret service and also the tax act as well. Iq. Editor hassan. Iq mister chair and Ranking Member peters for your continued attention to the issue of School Safety and first, i want to thank all of todays witnesses for taking the time to speak with us and to help ensure that our children are protected as we make our schools safer. A special thank you Mister Schachter and mister hoyer for your tireless efforts to honor your children to protect and support all our children and to all of the other family members who are here today have lost their loved ones, i think he was well or being here and for adding your voices and your presence and your witness to this issue. Mister schachter, i like to start with a question for you. I share your view that we need to acknowledge that School Shootings pose a real threat that impacts communities nationwide and that we need to focus on what we can do to protect students and prepare them for the unimaginable. I became governor of New Hampshire shortly after the horror of the sandy hook shooting in New Hampshire, we took action. The state department of safety work to expand a number of School Safety initiatives including a statewide initiative to improve School Notification systems, to improved security assessments for school and improve information sharing between schools and First Responders. I know you talked about somet f this today in your work through safe schools for alex have you found these kinds of measures are important in ensuring schools and local Law Enforcement are more prepared in cases of emergency . You are 100 correct. Unfortunately in our commission we did an analysis the last 20 is of active shooters and what we found was that majority of the shootings are over and 45 minutes. Unfortunately, even though our Law Enforcement would do their best to try to get to the scene they will not get there in time. Even if the roll on campus was a courageous individual which he was not, it still took him one minute and 44 seconds on a golf cart to get to the front of the building. By the time that happened 24 children and staff wereha alreay shot and or killed. Law enforcement when ind get the in time. Thats why immediate notification of Law Enforcement is critical and if we look at the Safest School in america and indiana, each teacher wears a e key fob on the neck so when two seconds after pressing that key fob told Law Enforcement exactly whats happening in the Law Enforcement has access to the cameras which Broward County refused to give Law Enforcement. They did now but Law Enforcement did not have access to the cameras inside the school prior picking indiana once they hit the button and it is depressed Law Enforcement can look inside the school to see exactly where the School Shooter is and has live actionable intelligence and is exactly where to go, where does the officers interdict and stop the attack us as possible. And other critical piece that we need to continue to work on is and needs to be the closest available Law Enforcement officer. It shouldnt matter whether its a county sheriff or municipal officer or a state trooper. The fact is whoever is closest to be able to get that information and respond. Thank you again for your work and i look for it to continue to work with you and all of the witnesses. Mr. Hoyer, as youve discussed, we need to focus as well on prevention efforts are prevention includes increasing School Safety but also recognizing the role of mental sureh and making individuals who exhibit behaviors that are threat to themselves or others do not have access to firearms and other deadly weapons. This is one of the reasons i been a strong proponent of expanding the extreme Risk Protection orders also called red flag laws which allow courts to issue timelimited restraining orders to restrict access to firearms when the evidence individuals are planning to harm themselves or others. To do this effectively we need to make sure students know where to report suspicious activity and how to seek help. In your experience with the National Assocation of families for safe schools, what have you found to be best practices for building a comprehensive prevention approach that ensures students experiencing and Mental Health crisis receive the help they need and are kept us safe as possible . It starts with something pretty simple. One of the things we are advocating for is Suicide Prevention oron intervention. There are proven off the shelf programs out there. Columbia protocol is one. Its a fairly simple one card, six questions, tells you the question, tells you howo to respond to the edge. It can be anything from i will sit here with you and patrick back to i will sit here with you until someone comes to help. It empowers people. Call lipscomb family members and friends to actually ask the questions and get people to seek help. We are advocating a funding a promotion of those already proven programs. Our friends at sandy hook had a Program Start with hello, and these programs have existed for a while. The one that columbia protocol waslu admitted in the marines, w 22 reduction reduction in suicide. I just think that starting there, starting with something simple and easy to implement would be a first step to implementing an overall comprehensive program which eventually will have to include Mental Health, talking with the school, possibly the police, the whole threat assessment were just talking about. Thank you. Dr. Temkin, i wanted to touch a couple of points i know you have made. Your expertise in prevention is critical as we examine how to balance increasing student safety while avoiding unintended effects. I am particularly concern with trauma explained by students and teachers during active shooter you trainings as a potential for disproportionate impacts on stoops of kolb and students who experience disability. Can you share concerns you have with some active Shooter Drills and how some School Hardening efforts could result in disproportionate impact of certain students . We have to balance all of these issues and we all want to make our school safe, but again if you can help us understand what those best practices might look like and how we could avoid some traumas to students, that would be really helpful. Absolutely. N to be clipped there have been rigorous evaluations of many of these active Shooter Drills that are what folks call multioptional only been referred toll as alice. These drills can often be very realistic, such that teachers have reported in media, which without rigorous evaluations are probably the best laugh at the moment, that they have been traumatized by seeing the colleagues shot with plastic bullets, by seeing them tript over each other and saying this was more traumatizing than it was training. In terms ofra disparities we hae to be very careful in thinking about both staffing as well as the impact of staffing, so particularly when it comes to School Resource officers. We know that School Resource officers when they are present and especially when youre involved in the discipline at school will drive up suspension, expulsion and criminal justice referrals for minor, nonviolent offenses. We know that o there is extensie disparities for both kids with students and of color and receiving such discipline for we have to be careful when we are recommending these that we consider these unintended consequences. Thank you thank you very muc. Thank you all for your testimony. Senator rosen. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman, Ranking Member peters. What you think senator scott for his work in bring you here today. And as i think about how you must feel as parents, community members, students, children and families, grandchildren,n, the impact at what you experienced on a personal level, it has an impact on allpa of us, and i ner want to imagine what you have gone through. I never want another family to go through what any of these families are going through. And i hope sincerely that we can work on honoring the loss of your most precious precious loved ones by our action in the future. And so i agree with the panel that we have to emphasize multimodal approaches to address this issue. Its not just one thing. Its many things because each incident is going to be different. Schools have to foster safe and supportive learning environments for all students. We have to have an adequate number of schoolbased mental professionals to reach students in crisis, suicidal, angry, whatever that is. You cant learn if you dont feel safe for the other students who may be scared of someone who they see that has issues. In nevada, Nevada Association of School Psychologists, they recommend a ratio of one psychologist for every 500700 students. In nevada wech have one for evey 3000 students. Its just a ticking time bomb. Nevada association, they really work w with the School Psychologists have worked closely with our state legislatures. We actually just passed recently aa senate bill 89 that requires our state board of education to recommendations for ratios of people to specialized support personnel countless psychologist, social workers, nurses, and to develop Strategic Plan to achieve those ratios. I am going to ask in a letter from the school of psychology be entered into the record. Without objection. Thank b you. Answer dr. Temkin,n, thinking about this multimodal approach, i have a twopart question. How do you think schools can work to identify and support students needing more intensive inner tensions interventions before, after bid another tragedy could happen . And when you speak a little bit to of federal support both through guidance and funding to support these efforts . Because thats what we can do. Absolutely. In terms of a differing students, i suspect a Public Health model, meaning that universal approaches, things like bring in prevention programs can reach about 80 of our students. But about 15 probably need a little more intensive support and about 5 really need targeted intervention. When we institute these multitier systems of support, we actually help identify those didnt do data collection,le bringing in teams that are not just Law Enforcement but Mental Health teachers to understand a student, identify for the challenge. Threat assessment is not just about identifying, a limited effort. Its grounded in support. Its grounded in lets find a a way to help the students so that they concede, not just to prevent a tragedy. In terms of federal support, weve seen over the course of the last 20 years starting with response to columbine a series of investments the federal government has made in School Safety that it really focus on prevention. The safe schools, the safe and supportive Grant Program 2010, these really helped schools and we saw significant reductions in School Safety indicators of School Violence indicators as a result but their very limited. We were hopeful to see the ress of whats going to come from that every Student Succeeds act that weve invested in title for fun but i should note that the Student Success and academic enrichment Grant Program covers a whole host of things, not to School Violence prevention. So when schools are deciding what to use those funds for they may not be investing there either. Federal support andot federal guidance, tells where those would be best part is the very important. Could you speak more about National Guidelines and standards forbo School Staffing and evidence behind needing these specialized staff . Absolutely. One thing i would like is we know its not just an underrepresentation of School Psychologists and other support personnel. Its a disparatesu representati. So we know that majority of black schools are much more likely to have a School Resource officer than the art of a Mental Health professional. Compared to majority white school. This is problematic again as i mentioned to him School Resource can perpetuateur disparities in school discipline. Youre on a resource is a School Resource officer and not another health professional, that is good to be where your default lies. We have to balance our investment in schooll resource officers with school Mental Health professionals. We need to increase our number of Mental Health professionals across the board i suppose. I want to talk about what senator hassan talked about, she talked about the trauma on students just going through these drills. Because it isn frightening to come home, special if you elementary school, preschoolers are having drills. The impact of that is great but god for bid theres a tragedy. Whats the impact of this trauma Going Forward on the students, the teachers, people who remain to have to continue to maybe not go back to that school, but had to go back to some school, go back to their profession . How do we support people who have been through through a hoc event like this . We need to invest in trauma informed approaches. That mutually acknowledging trauma and find individually, individualized ways to help support efforts and feel cocoa in theirbl environment. Theres there is no onesizefil model for any of this. Its going to depend on the particular community as well ass the particular individual. Not everyone responds responseo traumatic events the same way. We talk a lot about adverse childhood expenses, for instance, ass a driver of trauma but not every child that experience is an effort childhood experience is going to express. We have to be careful for instance, when we doing screenings that we are not just labeling a child who has experienced something hard and like for someone who is damaged. We have to really compare this to each individual situation. Thank you. I appreciate your testimony and i think an approach with Mental Health and School Safety and hard and soft ways is a is thee move forward. My time is up. Thank you. Senator rosen, i want to start with something that was price meeting here, that in the school in parkland there was controlled access. This will always have this on is only one point t of entry. Its hard for me to get in school. Its also true of most businesses. Is that pretty, in florida . Was that not estimated . I asked my colleagues can do you pretty much at one point of entry in your schools . [inaudible] sheriff, can you comment on that . Its very inconsistent, and singer. Of entry, fence campuses are not across the board. En ill give an idea, its also how it is evident. So it Stoneman Douglas campus, the campus was fenced but heres the practice. They open the gates for arrival time at 5 30 a. M. 48740 thymic school parttime. They open the gates in the afternoon at 21 54 to 40 thymic dismissal and with the gates are open they were and step. We asked the question why come its just way weve always done it. Why even bother having closed and locked gates . Is dr. Temkin said, shes right, the majority of these, in the last 20 years thereve been 46 targeted attacks on k12 schools, 43 were done by insiders. 94 . In the case of the situation the shooter exploited in turkey new the gate was going to be open. He arrived at 2 19 p. M. The gate was opened at 2 15. When you are gates if you are not staffed and dont have some extended was adequate communication devices 200 others, its all useless. I would say sayni its inconsistent or we are making progress. Its Getting Better in some places are still a lot of false. Control of entry would be a tier one action, correct . It depends. In florida marjory Stoneman Douglas is a very, very large campus. Theres 13 buildings and a lot of the schools around the country, and one building its much easier to have a single point of entry, two other visitor vestibule or a man trapped. Its easier that way. You brought up the point i was going to bring up, dr. Temkin, just basic school size. We have these massive schools now did versus go back 100 years, single room im not suggesting we go back to single room schoolhouses, although things like theyre somewhat affluent towards towards that way. I think these massive schools are dehumanizing in many respects. Understand easy to how kids get lost and the bullying and that everything. Can you comment on the large school sizes andnd is a part of the solution, start going against . Maller schools it certainly could be. I think we should definitely do more research into that. That the theorizing is theres t necessarily a significant difference in the rates of violence i think in part because it depends on investment each particular school is making into both School Safety and School Climate, al recently comes to bowling because you mention we know that theres would not the correlation between school size and rates of bullying. I want to go back to parkland. Parkland. Whats notable about that perpetrator is how well known his problems were. Just wasnt to makebl it. In your testimony you talked about modifications to relaxation, clarification for the federal Family Education rights and privacy act, Health Insurance affordability and accountability act. Sheriff, was that part of problem . Did those federal laws prevent information . Was a negligence are to what extent is that both . All all of the above, a combination. Its been around for four years, it has been updated. I think theres lot of room at opportunity to uptodate summit so they can be better information sharing. Hipaa the course of a a recenty enacted but ill say this as first both of those laws are concerned, they are overly applied by the people who are charged with interpreting get and applying them and exceptions are not as interested as as a d to be. Theres a lot of room to do more training come to more Effective Communication so that those thoughts can be connected. There are q some questions and discussion about behavioral threat assessment teams. The teams are only as good as information the receipt. If they are t not receiving copperheads of information that is going to tell the whole story, then they will make a good decision. That information sharing and having the laws that allow that are vitally important. In our system of justice innocent until Proven Guilty is a bedrock principle so it is an issue. What do you do if theyre not guilty yet . And it isnt so much, its true and theyre not guilty but there are things that can be done. The behavioral threat t assessmt teams, i would take it a step further on big a step differently in the threat assessment process. If you wait until we have threats were waiting too long. We need to get it back you with our our behavior indicators of concern and we need to catch it before it manifests asor a thret so something can be done, there can be intervention. One of the places that is lacking is an care coordination. Many of these kids that we see are under multiple treatment plans. There needsti to be more case management, more coordinating care to catch it early. And also get it comes back to his identifying the threat and doing something about it. There was a campus monitor that saw the shooter. The campus monitor is a a secuy person at the school, is he saw the shooter walk through that gate unfettered and it took the shooter one minute 30 seconds to look through the gate to the east door where he walked in. He identified him, i stood issued and and said to himself, thats crazy, boy. And hes carrying a rifle back. He did nothing about it. He did nothing about it. This is where the boards of our mitigation is in bengal to identify and directed to make the threats so others can actually. If they not identify and theres nothing tricky nicky. He saw and we have him on tape saying that he saw crazy boy carrying a rifle back. He knew it was rifle back picky did nothing about it so wasnt t to make it and people could react. Accommodation of think that have to be done. I want to follow up on what senator scott was talking in terms of the School Safety officers. I want to know more about that. First of all what is the profile of the School Safety officer . Are they supposed be armed and former Law Enforcement or form of military . There is a safe School Office of your essay School Officer can be a Police Officer are Deputy Sheriff or a guardian. A guardian is not Law Enforcement officer but somebody who goes through a rigorous background and screen progress and rigorous training and is the person on campus who is authorized under law to thwart that active assailant event. The guardians could be School Employees who perform it as a collateral responsibility. So they could be the Athletic Director. They could be the counselor. He could be the principal or they could be somebody that is hired, is dedicated just with apple. So the state allocated money. What happened to the money . What was a use for . Is still sitting there because in lashes budget 67point 67. Nonrecurring funds in this year the legislator rolled it over again. So of the 67 million that was allocated originally, theres probably at least 50 million of it, probably more still sitting there that is available to implement the guardian program. So schools didnt take the money and reality to Something Else . They just didnt take the money. Was there resistance to and armed individual . Was of that political argument there . Yes, and the resistance was to the guardians. To me of the school board and School Superintendents wanted but they can have is they wanted only cops. The reality of it is that cant happen. First and foremost, in Law Enforcement today probably one of the most pressing challenges we have is recruitment and retention. In florida alone today are 1500 openings for Police Officers. Theres 4000 schools in florida and only half of them have cops. Where are we going to get 3500 cops . To it doesnt work so we have to use alternatives and comes down to what can you live with . The guardians provide a good alternative. The problem was they dont like it and so the didnt like it. They didnt want it so they threw, this was an Unfunded Mandate flag which it wasnt and said we are not going to do. Thats resulted where we are. We have aer real shortage of Mental Health professionals as well. Senatorr peters, i have a ton more questions but i will turn over to you. Sheriff gualtieri, the other thing thats been highlighted in the after action report was the problems with the Communications Systems and the interoperability of them. These are not new. We hear about that across all sorts of Law Enforcement agencies now but this is critical because speed is a matter of life and death. The quicker you get folks and communicate and find out where that she is an core that your activities. My question to you is, what is your recommendation . What could we be doing today to help the Communication Systems or invest in Communication Systems and coordinated . What actions should we be think about in this committee to deal with the problem across agencies, across the country . So to back issues. One would be ensuring that radio interoperability at which means all Police Officers and that petitioners and all Law Enforcement entities can speak to each other. That was not the case and parka. The Coral Springs Police Officers, Coral Springs and partly a but. The Coral Springs Police Officers in the i brad kaaya sue step is to provide Police Services and parkland could not communicate because they did that radio interoperability. They didnt have each others rated channels installed on radios and they rely on a system of patching the two channels, but you cantt patch that what you dont know. Nobody installed the Coral Springs channels in the Broward County council so we can patch it. You had to back totally separate operations. Thats unacceptable obviously and those types of things can be fixed and you need to be fixed by the needs to be interoperability. Second is in the 911 centers, is way too many counties in florida and across the country have multiple 911 centers in their counties. Most people think, and they are wrong, when you pick up a phone and youca call 911, that the person whose answer your call is going to be able to dispatch help for you. Thats not true. That was not the case in this situation. The first girl who called 911 from the first floor in building 12, her 911 call was answered by the Coral Springs Police Department because they set it up that 911 calls in parkland went to the Coral Springs 9 11 center, not the broward Sheriffs Office 911 center. That first call that came in was answered in Coral Springs. That calll taker waited 28 seconds before he then transferred it over to the Broward County Sheriffs Office. Itpr took 87 seconds to process the call at the Broward County Sheriffs Office where the story had tobe be told again and thent was a man and 24 seconds before the first dispatcher would force to reader to dispatch the first lawenforcement officer. Amen and 24 seconds. On the first floor, 24 people were were shot or killed in a minute and 44. Those are the things they need to change the essence of mccalls 9 11 that call needs to go out immediately. Seconds matter. The irony here, and irony is when finally the dispatcher Coral Springs Police Officer, the first officer he arrived in 19 seconds. So if itd been done properly and the work for been set up differently, maybe somebody wouldve got there a little early and they could have helped. Dr. Temkin, my state of michigan is a state which in diversity, including folks in rural areas, urban areas, also students of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. Theres no onesizefitsall approach to School Safety and we need to be thinking about that as we are looking at putting together a national policy. My question to you is what are some of the unintended consequences we should be aware of when discussing School Safety measures that may not look the same across very Diverse Communities . I think its important to recognize that it cant be onesizefitsall solution. I can say that the high school i attendedde in arizona wasnt lad out as a traditional high school. School. We had multiple buildings, something similar to Marjory Stoneman. The security measures that would take to secureri that school wouldve been very different than the schools here in d. C. , which are largely held in a single building. We have two not restrict the solutions that we can give schools, and we also need to recognize that every context is going to be given. It are rural area it may take even longer than the sheriff had mentioned for Police Officer to reach a campus. We have to recognize that and developing whatever recommendations we give schools. Thank you. I dont know to what extent theyre there still sense of urgency in colorado. I know the sense of urgency there is in florida. I have since theres a pretty high level urgency in connecticut. Question i have is how do we create a sense of urgency that exists right now in florida after these tragedies . How do we find champions in states where the tragedies have not already occurred, people like tom and max and all the other families involved here . How do we do that . I am completely supportive of a clearinghouse. We will still need, well still need within the states those champions. I will try to be the champion in wisconsin. It should be incumbent on every senator to do that but you still need people that are there pretty much fulltime driving this process. Are there any suggestions . Absolutely, and its that mindset that needs to change, that we had in parkland, that they had in sandy hook that its a could happen here and my schools are safe. If you have that mindset, it prevents you from having a security mindset. The principal a marjory Stoneman Douglas when he was interviewed and asked if there was a threat to shoot up your schools, you du expect in a about it . His answer was no. He was completely this interested at an and a threat assessment process and the security of this campus. That needs to change and its not an easy answer, but i think part of the way we do that is why, number one, having that School Safety Rating System to show the public whether or not the school is safe. Right now there is no way for a parent to go online to see if the school is safe, and if we can takee that information and push it out to the public i think it will put nationwide pressure on School Districts to applet the best practices that will be developed inic the clearinghouse, and i think thats one of the major ways. And then also its the best practices because as we travel around schools to ask us what can i do . Show me wherero to go. The clearinghouse will develop those best practices and they will be up on School Safety. Gov very, very shortly hopefully. I want to talk about your best practices. I think senator scott use the word things we just had to do. Im assuming things wecu had too comes obvious. What is the criteria you are setting, is resetting those tier levels . Do you have multiple criteria . No cost, low cost, people agree on it most effectively . What do you azure criteria . Tier one would be a lowcost know, no cost. Were not talked that if meeting massive amountsre of technology and that would cost a lot of money and would be a very short time to implement. Also for another example is locking doors. You lock your door when you leave your house. Every teacher should be teaching with ate locked door. Then you go to cure four, longtime temperament and very costly. Implement those that Marjory Stoneman commissioned, laid out and i think that the commission, the clearinghouse is going to be hopefully doing that as well. In my briefing, i saw the summary recommendations from your commission, from the sandy hook, from the column by, or on the federal commission. And they set up a matrix for me, here are the columns, here are all the recommendations. Which commission was recommending which. There are a fair amount of differences but there were a lot of recommendations. But there are things that every school can do, no matter if youre in indiana, in rural indiana or in, you know, miami. Every school should be doing these nocost lowcost thinks. Thats what i appreciate about the structure you brought to this, the priority in terms of what we need to be doing, and again a national clearinghouse. Does a record of Big Government program which is of course the National Government to be that clearinghouse and do it thoughtfully and highlighted and for my standpoint legislation ought to be action inducing to great the pressure to find those champions in states so it is driven at a state and even more important at a local level. Schools are a local issue. It usually is. You mention indiana. I know ive met with so many people on this issue. I think i met with the folks who really hardened, kind of an exhibit one of the hardened school, it costs i think 300,000. Can you tell me more about that and talk about all the things theyve done . The reason there was such a high cost is because they have bulletproof glass and at school. Obviously thats not scalable, but the things that school doesnt do you would come number what you would never know that it has the best security. It does not look like a prison at all. You wouldnt even notice that. Doesnt even have metal detectors. But what it does has it has the immediate notification to Law Enforcement and it has, they drill, the practice. Because if you dont train your teachers and your staff, you see what happened like my son was murdered. Thats what happens if you don. Drill and you dont train. When i i went to the school i tour rightprivate after the tragedy in parkland, and one thing that i thought was very illuminating was we talked to teachers. We talked to children in the school and they felt safer knowing that they knew what to do in an emergency. They know that if theres an active shooter, you know exactly where to go in that classroom, and another tier one measure would be, they have a red line in the classroom in the corner of the classroom so that every child knows where to go. Hes out ofo the sight light of that window. Alex was murdered because the murderer targeted him to that window, and the kids on the second floor like the sheriff talked about a lot of them were in those quarters. Thatsin another thing is lowcost, nocost restaurant is very, very important. Training for Law Enforcement officers in the Marjorie Stoneman douglas shooting, the actors shooting train fellow person had, they only trained active shooter every three years. Active Shooter Training whether its Law Enforcement or staff and children, its muscle memory. You need to know what to do. These are life skills. We dont live in kansas anymore. This is happening around our country. Pp children, staff need to betray no matter if theyre in a Movie Theater orte if theyre in a school. They need to know, they needmo o be equipped with his life lessons to go to protect themselves in case of an emergency. I should knowns this. Did you all see each others testimony before today . Negative. I think its interesting, drt live fighter drills. That you scratch your head but the typee of drill, give any problems with what axis talk about ine terms of, like we used to do, like crawl under our desks. I didnt feel particularly traumatized by that. I realized it was pretty stupid about i mean, we do need to prepare just like you to do fire drills. You see any problem with that . The agree we need to repair but i think its a way we frame how were doing the training as well as the types of training we do. I think we have to be careful that these dont become so routine that when an incident unfortunately happens, that students dont feel complacent, this is just another drill. That is a risk of overdoing some of these things. I also think that we have to make it clear that we are not doing this because there is an imminent threat. I think thats whate kids scar, when you think that the community they are in and the community, the teachers the around are going to in some way harm them, they become scared to come to school. We need to prevent that option as well. There has to be that balance. In preparing and listen to testimony in that type of thing, i think about another issue we are dealing with all the time and is the problem outer border. Before senator peters start rolling his eyes at this one, i see a similarity in terms of what we did it with because right now we have a crisis at the border. There is a specific problem in here now, and oftentimes the solution which by the way is a solution. If we could develop those countries, if we could get rid of the drug cartels, we could end extortion rackets and provide opportunity you would not have a migrant flow out of central america. But thats a very longterm solution. Again, with all respect, dr. Temkin, an awful lot of things youre talking about, better Mental Health, treatment, again, we do have enough Mental Health practitioners now. How do we separate out, how did we make sure that the longerterm solutions which are completely valid and we would all love to do them, dont get in the way of that tier one, the things we must do right now . Really take that long term viewpoint because the next im going to ask is some of the controversial proposals as well that those dont get locked up or get included in these things and present action. So i think the main issue is that a limited amount of resources to go to them. We had to balance out investments in multitude to defend our schools with what were doing to prevent School Violence and build our students. When we are giving such a limited amount resources, our schools are incentivized to do the visible easy Security Systems and less emphasized amrita engaged in a systematic prevention effort that are really necessary to create safe schools. We have to incentivize both. Im a big proponent of the just principle, keep it simple stupid, okay . What im asking, he to give folks like you homework assignment, but again i seen the recommendations. I knowmm youve done that heari, but work with this committee to design the most simple but most effective piece of legislation under our t jurisdiction that cn grab peoples attention, that can get that sense of urgency, they can have the federal government do what itve can do so that we e taking action as opposedre to wt often happens around here, we just need more funny for exwife and see. N okay . More funding for x, y and z lets concentrate first on that becauseus to me the number one thing where do is great that sense of urgency so that every every school in every state is implement at least tier one. If we can get their attention on that, if we keep them active, take the first step, continuous improvement, if we can make that incremental improvement, take that first step, you can get peeps attention and theyll be looking at tier two and tier three and tier four with that argument over the more controversial things, okay . One final question i have is, i do want to address controversial issues. We talked about red flag loss. 15 states have enacted those. Whats already frustrating to me but guncontrol debate as i do think theres Common Ground but what in the property is you have to take all of mine for all online. What do we agree on . Lets at least enact on what we agree on. It seems to make an awful lot of sense to me you want to keep guns out of hands of dangerous people or people withda serious Mental Health problems but atri the same time for all respect, due process there a real serious concern about their not guilty yet . How do you come together . Thats probably one of the more controversial aspects of this whole thing is the guncontrol debate. How do we get by that . In the suggestions . Does anybody want to comment on that at all . I probably shouldnt have brought it up but i was advised not to have this hearing, too. We have inserted as result of legislation last year passed a red flag law. It is extremely effective. It has a lot of process and due process built into it where lawn for the hesitant to seek an order immediately from a judge and then a final hearing has to be held within 14 days. They are good for you and they can be renewed. Finally we also have now authority when we do take somebody into custody and will recall the states they act law which is an involuntary commitment for Mental Health evaluation come up into lesser we didnt have the authority we take somebody into custody because they threaten somebody lets it with a firearm. We couldnt even sees the firearm. Theres a lot of process built into it so it is being done the right people. Its not just blanket and sweeping across the board. Because of parkland that was something, is easy to pass that. Was it designed pretty well so it is noncontroversial . Have you been in a a state whee you didnt have parkland . No, it was controversial. But how controversial . I would say moderate to very controversial. There had to be a lot of discussions and negotiations as we all know. Its all about compromise and getting it to place where we could get something through. Its note perfect but its bettr than when we were. I just want to add, i think there are a number of things sent across the board that are lowcost, low cost, and probably the best thing is to set minimums on what should be done but recognizing that we are very, very diverse country and has to be local control in local communities, and that we tell and you tell and others were in position to tell people, tell them what to do but not necessarily how to do it to allow for the local control like with drills. You have to have drills but dont get into telling them the specifics of it. They need to be ageappropriate and will be different in differentat places. You have talent act as your response policy. If we can get to a place where every School District in this country had five, six, seven basic core secured competencies in place would be much further ahead than what you are. Need to make it so it is palatable, so it is the noncontroversial things that they will take and do. A big advocate of telling them here are the five, six or maybe can think of to do. Let them to figure how to do i. If we can get there we would move the needle. Im not a real fan of federal government. Im all about local and state control. I really dont want to create mandates but it you realize the federal government can play will but i want to be a constructive, facilitating role. You have anything further you want to add . Ill give you one last chance. Ill start with you, dr. Temkin compute , if theres something want to add to this. Not necessarily what we just talk about but to close out the ring. That ares a few pointslo really important to consider. One is what is our definition of safety . If our definition of safety zone about preventing School Shootings, i think security is clearly the way we want to go. But if we want our kids to feel safe in schools, if you want them to be protected against all forms of School Violence, ranging from bullying once up, e had have to do more than just security. We have to make sure were thinking more broadly. We have to b think about the School Climate. Mr. Schachter, we do so states are moving towards within their essa plans and corporate School Climate service. These c are movements that i thk could be helpful to take a much broader view of what School Safety needs. I think the other thing is we often need to build up on things that are already happening. One piece i want to make sure it is known to the committee is that there are several clearinghouses already in existence around School Safety data from the federal government and are available as those Technical Assistant industry i would encourage you to look at them and see what might be improved upon them. So crime solution. Gov is a federal website maintained by National Institute of justice that had many of the practices and programs available around School Safety and the evaluations, including those that have been shown to both network and have potential unintended consequences. We have to consider that as we are thinking through these. Theres technical Assistance Centers from the department of education including the readiness and Emergency Management pac in which there is a lot of this work as well. I encourage you as youre looking at the National Clean house as to what has been done and whats in existence. Thank you, dr. Temkin. Ill start with safe schools, and then proceed from there. Sheriff. I think we covered it. I appreciate the opportunity and thank you, chairman and Ranking Member peters for shining a light on this problem and letting people know we still have a lot of work to do. The needle does need to move further. In some casesds it needs to move to begin with, and what people need to know is its going to happen again and we have to do things differently. Appreciate the opportunity. I would just like to restate believe this is such a complex problem. Theres no single answer to this. A lot of School Safety, we think about these the layers of protection. For Mental Health is the first layer where we try to detect kids who need help. If they fall through the cracks, we have to keep a firearm out of their hands. Ifre they fall through the cracs there we have to have schools that are safe. You have to think about that, much broader problems than just one thing. Max . I want to address the mindset of the last 20 years that School Safety is a local issue and not really, federal government shouldnt have a lot to do with that. In my opinion, schools have failed to protect their children since columbine, and when those National Crisis have happenedmei think the outcome has a larger role to take and i think should take a logical and protecting its schools and p its children. And this was the federal governments role, they have the power of the purse. Most schoolsch receive money fr, in some formm or fashion from te federal government. Theres many credit programs in the department of justice that give that money to o schools, ad once we develop these best practices, and for instance, these 21 levels i would advocate that no school gets money unless they have implemented these tier one lowcost nocost measures. I think that would move the needle. Just give an example colorado just signed its law 20 years post parkland, postcombine to lock lock all the doors when you teach. Its taken 20 years foror that o happen. Florida has that as well. Recommended that but there needs to be nationwide. As the shift talked about were just talk about trying to move the needle here to protect our children. Max, ive always been impressed with just your basic common sense and the way you have taken your tragedy and just turned into a practical approach. Thank you, senator. Again, i truly appreciate that. Our sincere condolences. Thank you all for just beence industry the hearing record remain open for 15 days until august 9 at 5 p. M. For the submission for question for the record. This hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] allied look at the u. S. Capitol here this afternoon with us than what gavel in for business in about two hours or so when lawmakers begin debate they will consider three veto override resolutions. Early both the house and senate voted to ban certain arms sales to saudi arabia in the united arab emirates. President trump has since vetoed those nations and today the senate will vote at 5 30 5 30. Eastern to override those egos, twothirds of senators must vote to override. If that happens the house with an consider and override with twothirds of representatives voting required to overwrite as well. Watch the senate like at 3 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Tonight on the communicators, ohio representative bob goodlatte, the Ranking Member on the house energy and commerce subcommittee on communications and Technology Talks about recent actions taken by the Government Regarding the tech industry. When you think of the almost 50 billion robocalls made every year into this country, its going hopefully provide relief to the american citizens out there. Its important because a lot of people say, one of the top issues people contact me about, its also the top issue the fcc and the ftc receive every year is about robocalls. Watch the communicators tonight at eight eastern on cspan2. Tonight on cspan, vaping and the use of nicotine epidemic. Congress is investigating the issues. We start at 8 p. M. With opponents of vaping. Kids do not associate vaping. Its like kleenex or bandaid and there have been articles written about this and that certain that this i know because my son and ive been commenting on the story. Kids think they dont think they are vaping. They dont think theyre using ecigarettes. And the ceo, a manufacturer of ecigarette. We dont want any underage consumers using this product. We need to Work Together to make sure that no underage consumers use this product. It is terrible for our business, terrible for Public Health and terrible for a reputation. None of this is good stuff. Watch tonight on cspan, online at , online at cspan. Org or listen wherever you are with the free cspan radio app. Host reagan is come to with ideas it understands the power of ideas. And with a kind of foundation, the kind of intellectual foundation, a political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things. Author and historian lee edwards will be our guest on in depth sunday from noon to 2 p. M. Eastern. He is the author of just right, plus a collection of biographies of william f ugly, Barry Goldwater and