The Department of Justice (DoJ) would be able to award grants that support training that helps students, teachers and law enforcers recognize early warning signs of violence and intervene under a bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) led a bipartisan group of nearly two dozen senators in introducing the Students, Teachers and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Attacks Act. The bill follows the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.
In addition to establishing new grant authorities for the DoJ, the bill calls for investments to improve school security infrastructure, to establish an anonymous reporting system for threats, to develop school threat assessment and crisis intervention teams, and to improve coordination between schools and local police.
“By providing critical resources to schools to strengthen their security infrastructure and train teachers, administrators, and law enforcement officers to intervene, we can save countless lives,” Hatch said. “As I noted on the Senate floor last week, putting these kinds of critical resources closer to students in Utah has led to incredible success, stopping 86 attacks in schools since 2016. I believe we can replicate that success on a national level with this commonsense, noncontroversial proposal.”
Klobuchar added that the bill would provide schools and local law enforcers with new tools to prevent acts of violence — but it is only part of a larger solution.
“I believe we also need to pass a number of other safety measures related to guns, including universal background checks,” Klobuchar added.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a cosponsor of the bill, said the Parkland tragedy was “the direct result” of local law enforcement, the FBI and the Broward County School District to communicate.
Rubio also called on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday to revise a 2014 directive issued by President Barack Obama that emphasizes the responsibility of schools to conduct “constructive interventions” with troubled students rather than school resource officers or police officers.
“This policy allowed the departments to initiate an investigation into schools and, if found to be noncompliant, could be at risk of losing federal funding,” Rubio wrote in a letter to DeVos and Sessions. “Further, the 2014 directive and subsequent guidance included onerous requirements and harsh penalties that arguably made it easier for schools to not report students to law enforcement than deal with the potential consequences.”
Rubio urged DeVos and Sessions to revise the 2014 directive “to ensure that schools appropriately report violence and dangerous actions to local law enforcement.” He also noted that the STOP School Attacks Act has bipartisan support and should be passed “as soon as possible.”
The measure is also backed by various advocacy groups, including the Secure School Alliance and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Secure School Alliance Executive Director Robert Boyd said the bill would save lives.
““While many state and federal legislators are now racing to create legislation to address deficiencies in school security programs, Sen. Hatch was working on this legislation before the tragic events in Florida, and we applaud him for that,’ Boyd said. “The Secure Schools Alliance and our partners are proud to support this critical legislation, which we will call Hatch grants.”
Dominick Stokes, the vice president of legislative affairs at the Federal Law Enforcement Association, agreed that the bill was “extremely important” in ensuring the safety of children attending schools.
“School is supposed to be a safe haven for our children to learn while parents are working,” Stokes said. “Since 2013, there have been over 300 school shootings. In 2018 we have seen 11 school shooting across the country. This bill will help implement better ways to protect our children at school by adding money and resources to protect them by reauthorizing the grant program for school security.”