Parkland School Safety Commission Recommends Arming Teachers
MARQUARDT: This week, there's been a new controversial push to put guns in classrooms to avoid tragedies like the one at Parkland, Florida. It's been 10 months since 17 people, 14 of whom were children, were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Now, the school's Safety Committee that was formed after the shooting has voted to recommend a state law be passed allowing teachers to be armed. Those teachers would have to volunteer and undergo a background check. Joining me with more on this is CNN's correspondent, Polo Sandoval. Polo, this is obviously a hugely controversial subject, arming teachers, now one of the recommendations of this commission. What else did they say?</s>POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hugely controversial, and a huge report literally, too, Alex, about 400 pages that were prepared by members of this 15-person commission that was put together just months after that February 14th shooting. With two main purposes, identify basically what went wrong from law enforcement and the school district and identify different ways of preventing something from like this from happening again. The most controversial one allows all teachers in the state of Florida to be armed inside the campus. Now, when it comes to some of the other issues here, some of the other recommendations that were laid out by this commission, I want to read you some of the recommended changes that this commission believes should be done at school districts across the state of Florida, things like electronically controlled door systems, the installation of ballistic glass and also metal detectors. You keep going down the list. Also the installation of more fencing around perimeters, GPS locators on school buses. And then there's that proposal we just talked about, this idea of arming teachers. We should mention that Florida has already taken legislative steps in the past, mainly in March, when they allowed certain staff on campus that are trained to be able to carry weapons inside the classroom. However, if approved, some of these latest proposals would seek to allow all teachers to arm themselves as long as they are trained and pass additional screening here. That, Alex, in a very quick nutshell, is a breakdown of what these 400 pages lay out. These are 400 pages that will go to the governor of Florida and to legislators.</s>MARQUARDT: All right, Polo Sandoval, thank you so much.</s>SANDOVAL: Thank you.</s>MARQUARDT: For more, let's bring in Max Schachter. His son, Alex, was one of the 17 people killed in last February's tragic shooting. Max, first of all, tremendously sorry for your loss. And in the wake of your son's killing, you joined this Public Safety Commission that has now recommended arming teachers. Do you believe that armed teachers could have prevented this tragedy?</s>MAX SCHACHTER, FATHER OF STUDENT KILLED AT MARJORIE STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL: I feel I'm in favor of the Guardian Program, and the Guardian Program in its current form would have all personnel potentially to be a part of the Guardian Program to be armed except for teachers. But I want to explain why the commission voted 13-1 to vote in favor of arming teachers, and that is the -- the reason is we did an extensive 20-year active-assault analysis of every mass school shooting in the United States, and what we found is that a lot of things, number one, all these mass murders are over in a matter of four minutes. Number two, you've got all school personnel that are on campus and a majority of these school shootings, school personnel on campus have stopped these murders from taking place. Number three, this mass murderer had an empty gun five times. Five times he reloaded. And if there were personnel on campus that had a weapon, they could have stopped him and neutralized this threat and killed this murder. I did not support this measure. I recently traveled to Israel to look how Israel makes their schools safe. There's a tremendous threat there in Israel. And what they found is that they tried this before. They armed 14,000 teachers in the past, and what they found was the teachers were leaving their guns in the classrooms. They were leaving them in bathrooms, in their drawers at home, and they were extremely nervous about bad things happening with teachers being armed. I am concerned about this. Israel removed all 14,000 guns away from their teachers, and I did not support this measure. Teachers should teach, and that is the only thing they should do. But I am in favor of other personnel, principals, assistant principals, security monitors. The fact of the matter is we need a good guy with a gun on campus. Two is better than one, three is better than two.</s>MARQUARDT: Right. Israel also has incredibly strict gun control laws, we should note. But in this report, there are also several elements highlighted that may have contributed to the incredible horror that followed. We saw gates, doors that locked only on the outside of classrooms. There was an inadequate P.A. system. So what do you think other schools around the country can learn from this tragedy to make themselves safer?</s>SCHACHTER: I mean, there are so many lessons learned, so many best practices that are going to come out of this report. It will be issued January 1st, and I recommend every school district around the country to analyze our report. One very simple thing that Broward County still does not have is a code red policy. There needs to be training for teachers and children exactly what to do when there's an active assailant on campus. And also, there needs to be a hard corner policy or a safe zone. Every classroom needs to have a protected space that teachers and children know where to go if there's a murderer on your campus. This murderer did not enter any of the classrooms. He shot right through the glass window of Alex's classroom door. And it haunts me every day that if we would have had ballistic glass in that classroom window door, Alex, my little boy, would still be alive here today.</s>MARQUARDT: Max, you recently had a chance to sit down with the president and the vice president here in Washington. What did you tell them, and how did they respond?</s>SCHACHTER: They responded very, very well. I told them that, ever since this happened, schools are lost. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, whether it's Santa Fe High School, they do not know how to make themselves safe. Schools around this country are at a loss. They're investing millions and millions of dollars on security cameras to look at forensics of dead bodies when they don't even have locks on their doors. And so I recommended to the administration that, for the first time ever, they create a clearinghouse to develop national school safety best practices. This is vitally needed to give guidance to schools across the country. And the administration heard my pleas, and I am extremely hopeful that that is going to be in this report, this impending Federal Commission on School Safety report that's going to come out very, very soon. The administration is extremely concerned. They do not want this to be just another commission, to have a commission until the next school shooting. I think that the measures that they recommend and that are in the MSD Commission report are going to be the most widely accepted changes and the most drastic changes and the most significant changes to make schools safe in 20 years since Columbine.</s>MARQUARDT: All right, Max Schachter, thanks. Again, our deepest condolences to you and your family.</s>SCHACHTER: Thank you very much.</s>MARQUARDT: And we'll be right back.