The Parkland, Florida shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 people.
Parkland parent Max Schachter lost his son Alex in the shooting. Since then, Schachter has advocated for school safety in Florida and across the country. His non-profit, Safe Schools For Alex, provides resources and best practices for school districts, parents, and law enforcement.
On Thursday, Questar III BOCES hosted a day-long school safety seminar for educators and administrators in Troy, where Schachter was invited to speak.
WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with Schachter about his advocacy and how his life has changed since the Parkland shooting on February 14th, 2018.
I had a small insurance company before this, but I left that former life and this is my new life. I'm a national school safety advocate. I travel around the country speaking about school safety, and assisting school districts and law enforcement in states to implement common sensical safety legislation.
What can you tell me about the approach different states are taking? There must be a patchwork of legislation out there, policies that are on the books. Is that frustrating? And it must be a constant challenge.
Of course, it's hard, you know, everybody's doing things differently. But, you know, the state legislatures, you're dealing with are dealing with so many different issues. So, it's important that I get in front of them to talk about this issue and explain to them what happened in Parkland, explain to them that if it hasn't happened in your community, you're just lucky. And then at the next school mass murderer is already out there. The next gun that he's going to use is already out there.
You have a call for a holistic approach to addressing school violence. And there's been a lot of disagreement on both sides when it comes to guns or maybe the focus should be mental health. What's your approach? Is it kind of an all of the above?
There’s no one panacea. There's no one thing that you're going to do, that you're going to say, “Oh, you know, there's no more violence in the school or the world. There will be no more violence.” It's all about culture. And it's about making sure that leaders prioritize this issue above all else.
Can you tell me about the school safety dashboard and the data that is collected on, whether it's incidences of bullying, or classroom behavior, or instances of violence? What can you tell me about the dashboard and how did that come about?
Safe Schools for Alex's initiative is to create school safety dashboards in every state and provide information to parents and schools about what's happening inside their classroom. You know, when I dropped Alex off at school, I had no idea what's happening inside his classroom. So, they have a right to know what's happening, they want to know, and it's important for schools to have this information as well. They know what's happening in their school. But, you know, it's difficult to really understand that data if you're not looking at it in the larger context. So, we can't manage what we don't measure. And it's important to have accurate data so that we can make schools safer so that schools can address the issues that are happening on campus.
With some of the other policies that have been implemented with the state of Florida, what can you tell me about, one, the taskforce that you were a part of in developing legislation in school safety, and what do you think can be most easily replicated in other states? What can other states do right now to take action?
So, there's a lot. We have mandates that there has to be a director of school safety in every school district, there has to be a mental health coordinator in every school district. We just passed a bill, that teacher has to teach with a locked door. We have a statewide See Something, Say Something app. We have a law that every teacher has to have a panic app, so that if there's an emergency, they hit this button, and seconds save lives. The best tool we have to prevent targeted violence is behavioral threat management teams. And so, Florida has a great model, we just launched it, and New York doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. We are already training states, on how to implement an effective threat management model so that, you know, you can identify concerning behavior ahead of time and get these individuals off their pathway to violence and reduce violence in school.
Of course, a lot of that comes down to funding too, and not as many states have the resources as larger states like New York and Florida. So, what can be done at the federal level, to ensure that schools have the resources they need to implement safety plans?
Well, you know, obviously the federal government needs to increase funding for school safety and make sure they don't cut the funding. And then we need to pass you know, common sense school safety legislation like the Eagles Act, which pluses up the funding for the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center. The Eagles Act was named after the Parkland School mascot. And the national threat assessment center is a branch of the U.S. Secret Service that focuses on making schools safer, and they help schools, they train school districts and law enforcement on how to establish a threat management unit.
What can you tell me about your coordination and your work with the other families? I mean, you're an outspoken advocate and you've been traveling around the country for years now, but I'm imagining that some of the families involved, who lost their children are not quite as vocal. But do you still share a lot of support?
Absolutely. We're close with all the families. And, you know, we find comfort in being with them. And you know, we’re all in a club that nobody ever wants to be in, and they know what I'm going through, as I do them. So, absolutely, I'm close with them. And, you know, even though some are not as vocal as others, we're all in this together.
And do you have any message for anybody who is maybe sending their child to school next year, they have a young child who is beginning nursery school. A lot of people are worried about this as they sort of take the next steps in parenthood and life and are afraid of things that have happened, including to your own family. What do you say to young parents who are ready to send their children to school?
Number one, I would go to SafeSchoolsForAlex.org look up, we have, you know, the top 10 school safety best practices for parents. So, they need to become educated on what schools should be doing to make them safer so that they can have these conversations with administration. They should go to school safety.gov, which is the federal school safety clearing house, and that that was formed after Parkland. And there are best practices on that website as well. And then they can always, they can also reach out to me personally from our website, SafeSchoolsForAlex.org.
