Following the tragic slaughter of 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School, both the PA Senate and House Education Committees will be holding hearings on school safety. These are open to the public. If you can come, you should. This will demonstrate to lawmakers that voters are paying attention to them and you will see firsthand how our state government operates. I will be there—send me an email so that we can meet up before the hearings.

PA Senate Education Committee Hearing, Friday, March 2 at 10:00 am in Hearing Room 1
North Office Bldg.

PA House Education Committee Hearing, Thursday, March 15 at 9:00 am in Room 140
Main Capitol

We want to hear state lawmakers discuss how they will provide more resources to schools that will support healthy learning environments for our children and help prevent violent incidents from occurring in the first place.

For example, we’d like to hear lawmakers discuss how they will provide a $3 billion increase in Basic Education Funding over the next few years so all PA school districts have the resources they need to provide students with a quality education, including small class sizes and critical supports and services that will keep them from slipping through the cracks.

We’d like to hear state lawmakers discuss mandating and providing state funding for school counselors in every school building. School counselor-to-student ratios should be 1:250 so that that these trained professionals have the time to address bullying, trauma, and mental health issues students are experiencing in addition to conducting college and career counseling.

We’d like to hear state lawmakers propose providing funding for school safety measures that deal directly with the root causes of violence. These measures include programs such as school-wide positive behavior supports, restorative practices, increased mental health services, peer mediation, social and emotional learning, and trauma sensitive schools.

Unfortunately, we don’t expect to hear lawmakers discuss any of these ideas.

Instead, Senator Don White (R-Indiana) is doubling down on getting the PA House to take up Senate Bill 383, which the PA Senate passed last year by a vote of 28-22. his bill would allow teachers, custodians and lunch ladies to carry concealed weapons so that they can work as unpaid security guards in our schools. Senator Richard Alloway (R-Franklin), the newest member of the Senate Education Committee, recently expressed support for putting roving bands of volunteer militias in children’s schools.

Arming teachers and civilian militias in schools will not make schools safer. Instead, it will dramatically raise  the odds that students will be injured or killed because of a mistake. Remember when a PA private school teacher left her loaded gun on the back of a toilet in a 1-stall bathroom she shared with her students and four young children used the toilet before the gun was reported? 

Both of these proposals would, however, cost the state zero dollars.  It appears that this may be just about what many lawmakers believe keeping our children safe in their schools is worth.

We are hearing a few calls to increase state funding for one-time school safety grants. While this is a tiny step in the right direction, it would only provide a handful of schools with a small amount of additional funding. In order to ensure that this grant funding will be best spent creating safe learning environments for our children, state lawmakers must expand the use of that money to include counseling services for students and they must mandate training for officers who will work in schools.

Many parents and community members would like to have elected officials who value public school children and take time to understand an issue and think about how it impacts them and their futures. Instead, Republican leaders consistently claim to support our children while they avoid investing the significant resources our schools desperately need.