| After a horrific shooting at a school, every person should learn lessons and make plans to curtail the problem. Down in southern Florida, 17 people were murdered (Feb 2018). It is heartbreaking and emotional. We need to make better policies. |  |
 | First, let us understand that there are about 57 million K-12 students in about 132,800 schools. The mass shootings do not even approach 0.01% of the schools; however, it is still important. Shootings are not the only issue, and improved measures can have positive effects. |
| At the first report of gunfire, the calls to police are to bring guns to the schools, not to race guns away from the school. That might sound obvious. However, the calls for gun control can seem just as foolish as police racing away from the school. Yes, we want well trained armed people at the school as soon as possible to stop the perpetrator. |  |
 | The goal should be to have a much greater police presence in the schools. I would have them mostly in plain clothes. The proposal is to cross train teachers and police officers in both disciplines. We could have the entire substitute teacher budget go to the police department and have the police be the substitute teachers. We could have individual teachers go through the police academy. |
| We could have these teachers do real police work in the summer months and weekends to gain experience. We could have individual teachers and police swap roles every month. We could have a proactive police recruitment effort to be sports coaches. We could have police lead common clubs in the schools, such as computer, debate, RORC, chess, and robotics. We could have police in plain clothes supervising detentions. |  |
 | Education schools in college could incorporate a certain amount of police training. When police must go on light duty, they could do their work in schools. Retired law enforcement personnel should be prioritized for any role in the schools. Specific law enforcement desk jobs could be stationed in schools. Military recruiters who are trained and armed could rent an office in the school. |
| All these are just ideas that the school systems should be able to try. Every principal would have a goal of having one fire-armed and scenario trained person per 100 students. We do not want schools to look like a police state so they will mostly wear regular teacher clothing. The essential factor is that they can take quick action because they will be on site. |  |
 | A certain number of very secure weapon lock boxes should be stationed around the school; very seldom should weapons be carried by adults in schools because children’s and teen’s brains often act without proper thoughts about the consequences. These boxes will give well-trained personnel quick access to a weapon when it is warranted. Many protocols, alarms, cell phone alerts among others may be triggered by any lock-box openings. |
| We should have 100% of teachers go through three hours a month in crime scenario training. Individual teachers will specialize and do many more hours. Before an incident happens, we need to focus on detection and prevention. School personnel should have greater training and protocols for detecting mental illness. Although I do not write a lot on detecting and preventing, it is more critical because a thousand times more people could use mental health help than would follow through with a mass shooting. |  |
 | In my, welfare to charity reforms, I propose using labor hours from people receiving government ‘welfare benefits’. Many of these hours will be in schools as mentors, tutors, resource personnel, coaches and others. Many of these people have law enforcement training in their past. They will be retested and retrained to ensure everyone is using the same protocols. All mentors will have some training to assist in mental health, while specific mentors will specialize in more difficult cases. All will be supervised in this effort by experts. |
| We have about 1.2 million law enforcement personnel and nearly 4 million teachers in America. Giving police real jobs in the school and training teachers with practical police skills means having trained staff at a school at the time an incident occurs. These staff members will know the layout of the school and the students much better, resulting in a better response. |  |
 | In conclusion, having much more trained personnel at the schools and better proactive detection and prevention measures of better-trained teachers and mentors can solve issues before they become a major incident. |
