Education Week - April 17, 2013 - 21

EDUCATION WEEK

APRIL 17, 2013

Post-Newtown Measures Gain Ground in Senate
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19

have committed violent acts at
school] have real challenges. So
many were themselves bullied,”
Mr. Duncan said, noting a recent
conversation with a student in the
District of Columbia who said he
brought a deadly weapon to school
because he had been bullied and
felt no one listened to him. “When
students are struggling, ... someone
has to know what’s going on there.”
Under the Senate committee’s
mental-health proposal, states
would be encouraged to provide
districts with technical assistance
on implementing school-based mental-health programs. The measure
makes clear that schools can use
Title I money for schoolwide intervention services and to create or
update school emergency-management plans. It would also renew a
program that offers grants to states,
Native American tribes, and nonprofit groups to train school staff
and emergency-services personnel
to recognize the signs of mental illness and connect students and others with the services they need.
“Any piece of legislation that’s
going to improve mental-health
services, and schools’ ability to
deliver mental-health services in
schools by qualified people practicing within their areas of expertise,
we’re happy about that,” said Kelly
Vaillancourt, the director of government relations for the National
Association of School Psychologists,
based in Bethesda, Md.
In recent weeks, her organization
and others collaborated on their own

framework for improving school
safety, and the legislation echoes
some of those ideas, she said.
The American Association of
School Administrators was less
laudatory.
“If the Senate [education] committee wanted to pass meaningful mental-health legislation, they
would need to address staffing
shortages, professional development, and funding limitations,”
said Sasha Pudelski, the government-affairs manager for the aasa,
which is based in Alexandria, Va.
“This legislation doesn’t do that.
However, if this is the only way
Congress can do something related
to mental health in schools, it’s better than nothing at all.”
President Obama’s budget, released April 10, calls for some of
what the aasa wants. It includes
requests for $55 million for a program that would help educators become more fluent in understanding
and identifying potential mentalhealth issues in students and $50
million to train new mental-health
professionals to work with students
and young adults.

Movement on Gun Control
Getting the gun-control measure
to the Senate floor was at times an
agonizing process to watch. Speaking for hours before the Senate on
April 10, Democratic Sen. Chris
Murphy of Connecticut discussed
each victim of the Sandy Hook
massacre, noting, for example,
that 6-year-old Noah Pozner, the
youngest victim, was an advanced

Education WEEk

reader for his age and his twin sister escaped the shooting merely by
being in a different classroom. Sen.
Murphy’s stories were spread out
over multiple stints at the microphone and included an easel with
a poster covered in photographs of
the 26 students and staff members
of Sandy Hook killed on Dec. 14.
In addition, several families of
Newtown victims arrived in Washington to press senators into action.
On the same day as Mr. Duncan’s town hall meeting and Sen.
Murphy’s Newtown recollections,
first lady Michelle Obama spoke
in Chicago about violence that
has plagued that city in recent
months, comparing herself with a
young woman gunned down in the
city days after performing in inauguration events in Washington.
“Hadiya Pendleton was me, and
I was her,” Mrs. Obama said to a
group of business leaders she hoped
would donate money to develop
more community programs in Chicago—and to persuade the Senate
to act. “But I got to grow up.”
The gun-control bill calls for
$40 million in grants to state and
local government agencies that
want to upgrade school security
by buying lights, fencing, doors,
locks, and security cameras. The
money could also be used to train
teachers and administrators on
security and better collaborate
with local law-enforcement officials. Districts could also use
the funds to set up hot lines or
tip lines for “the reporting of potentially dangerous students and
situations.” Local government

WEBINAR

agencies would have to provide a
50 percent match for the federal
resources.
The National Rifle Association
pounced on the Senate compromise
over background checks, which had
been negotiated by Democrat Joe
Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. The senators agreed to expand
background checks to gun shows,
but exempt personal transactions,
say, between family members, from
the same kind of vetting.
“As we have noted previously,
expanding background checks, at
gun shows or elsewhere, will not
reduce violent crime or keep our
kids safe in their schools,” the
Fairfax, Va.-based nra said in a
letter to the Senate.
The organization’s remarks
came about a week after it unveiled its own proposal for improving school safety. The nra plan
calls for schools to arm at least
one employee, better secure school
buildings, and improve mentalhealth resources for students, saying that one of those ideas without
the other two is insufficient.

NRA Plan
The pro-gun group’s recommendations immediately drew
protests from education groups
and had already prompted a preemptive strike by a collection of
civil rights groups.
Although the decision to add
armed personnel is a local one,
said Asa Hutchinson, who runs the
nra’s school safety initiative, dur-

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ing an April 2 press conference, he
also said that bolstering mentalhealth resources at schools and
improving building security alone
are inadequate steps to ensuring
school safety.
“The presence of armed security
in a school is a layer that’s just
as important as a mental-health
component,” said Mr. Hutchinson,
a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, who also has
worked in the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security and the Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Agency. “Just [addressing]
mental health—it’s inadequate.
Armed security without access
control—it’s inadequate.”
Mr. Hutchinson said he backed
off an earlier idea promoted by
the nra shortly after the Newtown
killings: using armed volunteers
to stand guard at schools. Education leaders he spoke to over the
past few months were uncomfortable with the idea, he said.
Existing and future school resource officers should communicate better with local law enforcement, and armed school personnel
should have comprehensive training, Mr. Hutchinson said.
The nra plan does not address
limits on gun control or the size of
magazines.
“If you have the firearm on
the presence of someone at the
school, it will save response
times,” Hutchinson said. “That’s
the objective.”
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link to
the Report of the National
School Shield Task Force.
edweek.org/links

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Education Week - April 17, 2013

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