Schools need additional resources. Any Additional Support and training. I think were making a mistake sometimes we are investing in lots of stuff. We are not investing in the people that are going to be using those things. I think that is one of the mistakes we are making, not investing in the educators are going to be preventing those events. You wrote a book back in 2009. Teachers and administrators with guns, is that one answer . Know, there are a lot of answers. Prevention is a huge answer. Training, getting our teachers to be empowered and know what to do. To move beyond just as Law Enforcement orientation. Those things are really critical. There are lists and lists of things we can do, we have to start a conversation with that foundational belief everyone has, which is that no kid should be dying in school from any sort of thing. We really have to start from that foundational point that every Single Person has, and build up from there. Look at the case involving nicholas cruz, who came from a family that was anden, living with friends was on the radar of local officials. Clearly there was a breakdown between local fishes and the fbi. Wherever the mistakes made . Is too early to say because so much is still coming out. But we see when we look historically at these incidences of violence, there were indicators that we are not necessarily picking up on because we were not coordinating and collaborating. Law enforcement sometimes works in a vacuum, and lots of times there is an education voice in it. I think the most critical pieces threat assessment. We are not doing threat assessment in schools the way we could be doing it. We have to do the hard when you say threat assessments, what is involved in that . A threat assessment has three key components. Where we are identifying the individuals we should be concerned about. For violencesk against themselves or others. Assess, how concerned should we be . How bad is it . What are the indicators we see . And then we manage. It is not a way to kick kids out of school, it is a way to provide an intervention. It is really critical to be able to do all three of those things. Not just for the next shooter but for the next kid that is at risk of suicide. Threat assessment solves and schoolss and gives and ability pick up kids a lot. Intervention sooner. It is not the only thing that we can do, but it is a huge piece. Host after sandy hook where 20 students and six faculty members were killed, many thought that that would be the Tipping Point to have a conversation on gun debate. Nothing changed. Then the debate over bump stocks over what happened in las vegas, nevada, was part of the debate. Nothing changed. Regarding your area of expertise, will anything change on School Campuses across the area . I hope so. I hope this is a moment where we have conversations that are constructive. What things can we agree on and do . Guns are clearly a huge issue, wear schools are guns. , they are beyond we have medical problems, we have other issues from the community. We have a the weather and severe events. Those things are still safety issues. Clearly, the gun concern is one of the first ones. The problem comes if we have this dichotomous conversation that the only thing we will have is no guns or all guidance and we are not going to talk about anything else. The underlying factors are investing in educators to be empowered and have them have a seat at the table. Your responders to these events are the educators. As Law Enforcement does their best to be there as quickly as they can, the people dying on the front lines, the people dealing with the prevention and the response, our educators. They are receiving the least amount of training and support. Our phoneare dividing lines. We will get your calls later in the program. Is this your issue . What is the Educator SchoolSafety Network . 28 years in Public Education primarily as a building principal. I came to see early in the middle to thousands when i was working as the principal and my son became a volunteer fireman, the discrepancy between the amount of training he received very early in his career in Emergency Response and the lack of training that educators had, as a building principal, was very startling. I was a first responder. When something happened in my school, i need to i needed to respond until First Responders showed up. That lack of training spurred me on that educators did not have a voice or a seat at the table. It is not fair to say that Law Enforcement needs to protect us and do everything for us. We have to be empowered to make decisions to prevent violence and respond. Educators need to be involved in that. Not just one administrator, but every person in a school from the students, teachers, to the support staff, Everyone Needs to be trained and empowered to respond every day to the sort of events we have. ,ot in a vigilant, scary way but empowered to respond to whatever it might be. A kid that has a seizure. A noncustodial parent that is being aggressive. In of the things that occur a school, Everyone Needs to be empowered to prevent and respond to them. That lack of training is what spurred me on to become a training organization. Host Stoneman Douglas high school will be closed tomorrow, tuesday, and wednesday. Posted videothey from a demonstration that took place yesterday, using this as a marking point for these young people to call to action. [video clip] [chanting] enough is enough. Our legislature has considered gone expansion bill after gun expansion bill, concealed weapon expansion. [indiscernible] he was able to legally purchase and ar15. He took lives of people that i love and people that i know. Ist the full video available on the sun sentinel website. Florida students want to be a Tipping Point in the gun debate. My question, where does this go next . Guest you certainly can see the fear and the frustration that is areected in students that coming to school and fearful of what is going to happen. Some of that is because we have not provided the resources and the training that people are coming to school and saying, what are you doing to protect me . We are going to make it like a prison. That is not a school. A school is not a prison. We have to come to the Tipping Point where we are looking at a comprehensive solution that does not suppress one particular concern, but it dresses all of the different aspects of violent prevention, climate, and culture, all of the things that make a school a safe, supportive environment. We have students telling us they do not feel like their school is a safe, supportive environment. We have an obligation to change that. Minute by minute breakdown on what happened. A florida judge in the Child Welfare court deemed him stable even though the shooter cut himself and displayed not to symbols. There had been more than a dozen times that the police had gone to his place of residence to investigate him. Another breakdown of what could have been done. Even when the president says if you see something, say something, some people dead and nothing happened. Guest there is a systemic failure here, but if we go back in history and look at the past events, that has happened before. We have kids that are begging us to stop them. They are engaging in behaviors of concern, saying things and doing things. We dont have a system to provide support. It is not a punitive notion of trying to catch them and do something terrible to them and punish them, it is providing necessary support and intervention. It goes to the patchwork of solutions of all of the Different Things that we need to be looking at, and the different ways we need to provide support for kids instead of one simple solution that makes us feel better because we have done this and we walk away. This is a systemic problem. It will not go away because one person gets the thing they think they need. It will be solved when we have ate the hard work of looking the different components that go into it in terms of the guns and Mental Health, training, research, all of the different components that have to be pieced together to form a comprehensive solution, instead of just one quick fix. This is a sustained endeavor. This is host not a quick fix. Host our guest is a mother, educator, cofounder of the Educator SchoolSafety Network. You can find more by going to eschoolsafety. Org. Also an educator from myanmar, florida. Caller i am tired of hearing all of the psychobabble every time that a white male commits mass murder. , always mental illness. The white male has a psychotic obsession with guns, firearms, explosives, and a pension from mass murder. 99 of mass murders are white male. This is psychobabble. Host amy klinger . Guest we need to go back to the notion of being able to identify , assess, and manage individuals of concern. It is not always a Mental Health issue. There are issues that are disciplinary. There are issues with kids need to be responsible for what they have said, done, or the threats they have made. Clearly, there is the support piecend the punitive pennies to go with this. We see so many threats were kids post something on social media that is all for threatening. Then they want to say, that was a joke and i was kidding. We have to deal with that mentality. Acceptables not an way to entertain yourself or at out. We have to deal with all of those components from Mental Health to the person that is just acting irrationally or irresponsibly. They have to be held responsible for those behaviors as well. Host headlines from the florida sun sentinel, be kind, be present. A long list of issues at school. The family that allowed him to live with him, this need family in south florida, opened their home to a monster. Friend of nikolas cruz who asked his parents to let him stay in the home. He was there as late as wednesday, the day of the shooting. A parent, good morning. Caller good morning. Not cut me off. I would like to say that we received, all of the parents, received a letter on thursday from the superintendent trying to, i guess, quell our frustration. Terrified of what happened in the news. Let me summarize the letter. The letter stated, we have security measures in place. The security measures are laughable. What they consist of is the doors are locked. You have to be buzzed in. You have to go to the office, but you do not have to go to the office. Is no Police Officer or resource officer at the door to make sure that you go directly to the office. That is operating on an honor system. Else ind go into where the building and no one else is seeing what you are doing, what you have. This is not a proper security measure. We need increased funding for school security. I am terrified every day when i send my kids to school. Host we will get a response. Amy klinger . Not know that situation in your particular district, but there are a lot of violence Prevention Strategies that need to be implemented, but they do not necessarily involve purchasing more stuff. Involve policies and procedures, like supervision, where we place staff and teach them to engage with visitors. How do we screen people when they are coming into the building . We have buzzer systems, but if the only thing is happening is you push the buzzer, i push the buzzer inside, that is not a screening system. It does not do us any good if we are not using those. That is part of the problem, we purchase stuff but dont train people how to use it effectively. We have an expensive buzzer system, but it is not being used correctly in many places. What does the supervision look like . People standing around in the lobby before the beginning of the school. Maybe we only have one person supervising. We have to provide schools with resources to provide adequate supervision, have the teachers where they need to be, interacting with students. Not just security like a Security Guard at the mall, but people that know these kids, involved with the kids, can pick up on the signs, someone that youstudents can disclose to that they are concerned about this or someone said this. That is getting better, but we have big disclosure problems in schools where kids know things and they are not telling anybody. One major reason is because they do not think we will do anything about it. We have to have policies in place. Not just an anonymous tip line, but ways that kids can discuss with their seeing on social media. There are a lot of violence prevention measures that can be happening in schools, but you have to provide the training to be able to do that and the implement them. It is one thing to plop down money to put up a metal detector or hire a Security Guard, but that is not a way to systematically change safety concerns, the climate and culture in a school. That is harder. Parkland shooting in began outside before the shooter moved inside. Training, how do you balance the training to make it ageappropriate and not intimidating to the students while also being effective . Best the Training Needs to developmentally appropriate. It needs to be based on the age students, and what skills and capabilities you want them to have. It should not only be active shooter training. Tragic as this is a event that has ignited the national conversation, it is not likelyically the most crisis event in schools. Schools experience medical emergencies every day. Bomb threats. All kinds of Different Things are happening. The Training Needs to be more than just active shooter training. One of my fear is in response to this event is that we will have a heavy emphasis on active shooter training. Then you will have a child that goes into cardiac arrest and no one knows how to do cpr. No one knows the protocol for getting Emergency Responders in, because all we have done is train for an active shooter event. When you empower people with decisions on how to respond to a crisis event, you are making them safer from different events, not only an active shooter. Although that is the one that has captured our attention, we have to be able to look at all of the different threats that kids face. We track threats every day in schools and they are not only gun threats. They are threats of violence come in from the community, bomb threats, suicide threats, assault. All of those are occurring in schools that we need to train and empower the people in the school to be able to prevent those, identify those potential vulnerabilities and risks, and respond. Purchasing something might make us feel better on the surface, but it has not made us feel safer. We have to get beyond i will buy something, show to the public, and everything is good now. We go to schools with very entry, and no one knows how to use them. Host we are talking with amy safety andut school the Crisis Response in florida. If you want to go to the organizations website there is a statebystate look at where School Safety threats are. It is available on the website. Of u. S. States with high rates of schoolbased violent threats and incidents. Lets go to joseph in florida. Caller good morning. Bilingualired counselor for new york city and a veteran. I would like to make a quick the great need that i see for more counselors in the schools, well trained counselors. I was able to receive a masters degree from hunter college. I think that we need emergency to train well trained counselors and get them into the school as soon as possible. Also. In my experience administrators will use counselors. We need good counselors doing good work, groups, etc. Host is that a solution as well . Guest it can be one part, it is certainly a piece. Is that we have kids that feel very separated from the school or they feel very isolated. That is a piece of it. We have to remember that counselors and those things will benefit all kids, not just the next kid we are worried about as a potential shooter. We have a lot of kids with a lot of needs that will not manifest themselves in this terrible way. Their needs and suffering is still true as well. To that center where we are providing appropriate supports and holding, kidsand accountable and responsible for their behavior the things they do. And the things they we want to come to the center where we are looking at a comprehensive approach to School Safety instead of a reactionary one. That we are trying to be more preventative instead of spending time figuring out or talking about what we will do when the worst thing happens. Amounts ofend equal time, energy, and resources into inventing those things from happening and identifying vulnerabilities in the school, empowering teachers to identify those, and threat assessment to pick up on those kids that have real issues that need to be addressed. Parent from indianapolis. Thank you for waiting. Caller thank you for taking my call. My feeling is words, words, words. We have gone from thoughts and prayers to Mental Health. Mental health is not exclusive to the united states, yet other countries dont seem to have the problem. Rather than laws and what they are talking about, they might consider putting in a new amendment on the constitution banning guns in general. That is my thought. Host your response . Guest you started saying words, words, words. That is something we need to look at. Who is saying those words . We do not have educators that are heavily involved in this. Look at the coverage. The people on tv, the talking heads talking about and bringing up relevant points, im not faulting them, but you do not see an education voice. No one is talking about unique situations and concerns of educators and what they are trying to do. You have given them a tall order of all of the things they are supposed to do. Parents, Law Enforcement, instructors, social and emotional support. We are not having a conversation about what do you need, what do you want, how do you think this will work . We have a lot of talking at schools, but not with schools a lot. We need to shift that focus of that educators have a seat at the table and were listening to the needs of the educators. That is one reason why we became an organization, because there was not an education perspective. We need to look at research, what we know to be true, rather than this is my experience and this is what i believe. We are a research and training toanization, because we want be very objective and looking at what is really happening. What are the situations that educators are being forced to deal with . To have that be the start of the conversation. Host steve is next. Also on the line for parents. Caller i have been trying to coordinate with Veterans Affairs , likeities, senators senator rubio, schumer, collins, angus king, and others, to put allther honestly, with due respect, we have returning veterans that have been under fire. Teacher andake a make them be able to respond correctly under fire. Most people dont know if they have it in them or not until it happens. For 200,000 a year you could have guys that need a good job protecting people who are trained in the use of weaponry and have been under fire, or near it, enough to know that they will not be there pants p pee there pants and dive under a table. That is what happens a lot when people are fearing for their lives. I think that we could combine these two. Congress could help the Schools Finance it if they are not able to. I think that you have to have a Monitoring System watching cameras around the school to see if anyone is coming in with something odd, or being buzzed in with a weird looking pack on the back. Short term, we combine the two and we would have actual, trained warriors. You might not want that thought, but who would be at the school. I would send my kid to that school. Host we will get a response. You will need a lot of them, because you have a lot of schools that are very big. When you have a school with 1000 kids, you have one person empowered and trained to respond and everyone else is not, that is a recipe for disaster. I will take exception to the notion that people will rise to the level that you have trained them. If you feel that a teacher is not responding appropriately, you have not trained them appropriately. Extent to understand the that educators are being asked to do things beyond their capabilities and skill sets. Not because they are not capable, but because we have not trained them to do so. Were not talking about a response, we are talking about training people for prevention and the ability to identify threats and respond to them. You have seen in past incidences, is it a good idea to have armed Law Enforcement in the school . I dont have an issue with that, but to say that is the only solution and the only person that needs to be trained and empowered is ridiculous. Events. Had them at past you cannot expect one prison to protect 2000 people in a building. You have to empower one person to protect 2000 people in a building. You have to empower everyone in the building to pick up on warning signs. It might make them feel better to say we will put one person there, but you have to look at what is happening every day. Who is in the school every day. Given them the resources that they need. The resourcef, but is that they need to be able to do this tough job. It is not just that one person now because you have a trained person with a gun there are no more threats. Problems. O more that is not the case will stop as much as it might make us feel better, it is not a magical solution. Host with half a minute left, is there a price tag to this nationwide . Out thereould put that training people is significantly cheaper than buying a bunch of stuff that gathers dust or is used inappropriately and is not effective. Invest in your people. Schools are a people industry. Invest in them and give them the capabilities they need to do the job they need to do in a safe and supportive manner. We owe that to our kids, to our educators. Our kids are not even in this conversation as much as they should be asked of what is the cost to our children . We are raising a generation of kids that do not see schools as a safe and supportive place. We have to change that. Host our guest amy klinger is the cofounder and director of programs for the educators School Safety network. Washington journal cspans live, everyjournal day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up monday morning, Douglas Brinkley will join us to talk about president trumps influence on the presidency and an author will be here to look at the legacy of president reagan. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern. Join the discussion