In the wake of a mass shooting in South Florida, leaders from around the state, including from the Gulf Coast, gathered in Tallahassee this week to discuss ways to better keep schools safe from such disasters in the future. Gov. Rick Scott said input gathered at meetings will be used to create a reform package for state lawmakers to debate in the last couple weeks before the end of the regular legislative session.

Sarasota County School Board Chairwoman Bridget Ziegler says she left the Tallahassee meetings struck by demands from students for better security on campus. While she feels confident plans for single-entry campuses are on track in Sarasota, she says many leaders around the state need to listen to the voices of students more. “There is absolutely a strong passion and motivation to not just sit and talk things to death but for our plans to be actionable,” Ziegler says.

The meeting came after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjorie Stonemason Douglas High in Parkland, where expelled student Nikolas Cruz went on campus with a firearm and killed 17 people, mostly students.

Scott Hopes, chairman of the Manatee County School Board, says his takeaway from a task force meeting was that schools across the state need a hardening of security. “We need funding so the school systems are able to implement this,” he says. Hopes wants to see more retired military and police officers employed as student resource officers on campus, and for state law to be tweaked so they have the same tools at their disposal as cops.

Ziegler noted suggestions by Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight were similar and should be employed regarding campus security. At the state task force meeting, Ziegler spoke about how concerns with students can be identified at a young age, but school professionals need to follow up with parents and guardians to make them knowledgable about what students need to be successful instead of becoming more troubled over time. Before the meeting in the state capitol, she was promoting improvements to facilities that allow one entry point but numerous exit points on campus.

But Ziegler says the most striking points at the task force meeting were raised by Stephen Marante, a student from Coral Springs High School who had gathered input from student body presidents at schools around Parkland. Marante advocated for schools to have at least one student resource officer per 1,000 students, and he also called for active shooter drills involving students. “When was the last time anyone heard of a fire burning down a school, yet we do fire drills every single year,” Marante said. “With school shootings, there is one every month.” Many adult leaders, Ziegler says, raised a concern about whether security measures like metal detectors and added guards would make schools feel like prison institutions. She feels the same concern, but says hearing from students made her realize those growing up today are more concerned about safety. “As we reflect on our own education, we didn’t grow up in an environment like that. But we also didn’t exist with social media, which changed everything culturally. The 24-hour news cycle changed everything dramatically,” Ziegler says. “It’s almost about nostalgic memories of what we remember in our educational facilities and environments, but that’s not the environment these students are living in.”

Hopes, who was appointed by Scott to his School Board seat, says he believes the governor has been emotionally affected by the outcome and is willing to broach a number of issues from safety codes to even raising the age requirement for purchasing guns in Florida. “I don’t know if that will solve the problem because it won’t mitigate access to guns,” Hopes says. He’d also like to see the state employ some of the security entities operating in Florida that keep major facilities like NASA safe and utilize the expertise for better defending schools. In general, Hopes felt optimistic the plethora of ideas presented at the task force would be turned into a cohesive proposal to send to the Florida Legislature. 

Scott in Tallahassee says he will look at proposals that give more resources to schools in order to fund solutions. Ziegler  believes there will be policy issues that get debated in the wake of the shooting, including talk about gun control at the federal level and funding at the state level. But Ziegler also says school boards statewide need to find solutions that can be acted on immediately and which don’t require more funding.