Are Our Schools Safe?

    Unexplainable tragedy.

    What to do now?

    The Nation will discuss mental illness, gun control, the “climate of violence”. Hopefully our national leaders will taken action –  and now!

    In Fort Lauderdale, we should talk local. 

     I suppose we can call ourselves fortunate. The type of carnage that met the town of Newtown last Friday hasn’t happen here. 

                            
                                  Bennett Elementary
                                 
     But we have had terrible shootings in our schools.

    An Assistant principle was shot at Dillard High years back by a student she suspended. Before he shot her he said “here’s something to suspend me for”.

     At the same school, just a few years back, a student shot and killed a classmate in the hallway over a dispute.

     An 8 year-old brought a gun to Walker Elementary, but it was reported before anything happened.

                           
                                North Side Elementary

     
     We have Police Officers in our Middle and High Schools, but we quit funding them in our elementaries some years ago when budgets got tight.

     Last week, I visited a few or our elementaries, as our 13th Street Alliance is holding a special party for kids doing real well in school, despite difficult home lives. I went to the schools to meet with the School Administration to explain the program to them.

     Then I got to thinking this weekend, after watching hours of the news coverage –

     – I had walked into one of our elementaries without question, just last week. No one asked me who I was, what I was doing! I didn’t get buzzed in, and though there was a man near the door, he just sent me down the hall to the office.  

     We should take another hard look at the security of our schools – are they safe?