we were raised as military leaders. as military leaders, you're responsible for what happens at the top. when you hear a disturbing ig report regarding dr. shulkin's travel and also what happened in the d.c. medical cen you can see this online at c-span.org. if next up we are going to take you to a briefing from the national prevention science coalition talking about school the and gun violence. hear from teachers, social workers, pediatricians, and also a student from marjory stoneman douglas high school in florida. >> let me start by thanking bobby scott, who is our sponsor, who has been a staunch advocate of evidence and evidence-based policy on capitol hill area -- capitol hill.

his staff and the house committee on foreign affairs for giving us this lovely briefing room for our use today. i would like to thank our sponsors, penn state university, the universities of florida, south carolina, john hopkins, the society of policy and it takes a village to put on a briefing and we are very grateful to our sponsors. i would like to thank lauren hagen her family for coming today. i think i read in time magazine yesterday, there is a wonderful profile of the parkland students and their efforts to organize this march and this movement. ,he report had a wonderful line and she walks into the offices of the parkland students and says, "everything crackles with ."sense of ferocious optimism

i would like to thank you for inr leadership and grace helping us to understand where we are and where he might go today. make a special thanks you too michael green. -- thank you to michael green. when parkland happened, we were obviously all devastated. march appeared on the horizon and the magnitude of this event, and the opportunity to stand in front of congress and all of you and put out and forenced-based message crime scientists -- these guys have a much broader lens. -- the one the ones who said we have to have an opportunity.

we can't just have knee-jerk responses to what is in front of us today. we have to rely on the science and the evidence. we thank you for your leadership today. going to doe are for. we are live on c-span. as you walk out to use the restrooms, down the hall to the right, a little wave to your friends and family at home. we will be having a reception in the basement, banquet hall, i'm told. andwe hope you will join us continue the conversation we are about to start today. most of all, we hope you'll join us tomorrow on pennsylvania avenue for the march. the discussion today and the purpose of the national prevention science coalition is to promote science-based education of lawmakers. andre intentionally purposefully focused on perhaps

the hardest policy objective of all to achieve, because the goal of prevention science -- to make something visible invisible. to help a carefree child grow and be carefree instead of the victim of abuse. help educate and have an education that isn't thwarted by conflict at home or communities or conflict with the system or violence in the schools. you achieve these objectives, you cannot see what the alternative was that you avoided. that's what makes this path so hard. makes the looking out for voiceless constituency. our goal today is to give that constituency of prevention a voice. and we believe that science can help eliminate debt help illuminate the path -- science can help illuminate the path.

the sevens among deadly sins is science without humanity. here we will strive for both science and humanity along with a sense of ferocious optimism. let me turn it over to michael to introduce the panel. you, john. we start this about three weeks coming thank you all for . thank you to the panelists for agreeing to come and speaking. could not haveid occurred without a team of people. i want to specifically think the people from the national times coalition. jeff, who has done an amazing job in helping to organize this.

andy, who will be here later. we are here today not because a killer killed. we are here because of the anding outcry, activism encouraged of the students at marjory stoneman douglas high school. as a nation, despite these perilous times, i think we can all celebrate the path of young people throughout the nation in the march tomorrow and certainly continuing in the months and years ahead. let's give a hand to the spirit age --ourage -- and kerr and courage of our young people.

[applause] tomorrow?re marching this reefing not to give personal opinions. we are here for two reasons. we want to convey the thoughts and feelings of those who experienced the rampage shooting at marjory stoneman douglas high school through firsthand accounts. julie, i know you are speaking as part of an ongoing healing process. and i know it takes enormous .trength to recall this tragedy i don't think i could have done what you are doing. you and your of friends and your peers. designed to make schools safer

and promote student well-being. and the best of the best scholar practitioners in the country. all agreeing to speak without hesitation and without accepting or requesting speaking fees. each will be given 12 minutes to speak. each could hold our attention for hours. i hope you can all enjoy our speakers and formally. i do hope and believe legislators and all of us can benefit from what we are about to hear. for the scholar practitioners we have assembled, i want to acknowledge the obvious fact that we are all white men and white woman scholar -- white

women scholar. that was an unacceptable lapse of consciousness on my part as the primary organizer of this event. people -- every day and every year, and the senseless killings rarely reached the front pages of our newspapers and media. it has to because said. at the same time i do not, in any way, want to diminish the tragedy that was parkland. i do hope we can work as a nation together. and ie included bios, will not spend time reading them. without further a do, i want to begin to introduce and have our

speakers speak. right, ifen to my 14-year-old freshman at marjory stoneman douglas high school. some of you may have heard her brother speak. rebecca,d her mother rebecca would you stand, please? this is lauren and david's mother. >> and a public school teacher. represent the strength behind david and all men that walk in their footsteps . lauren., my name is i'm a freshman at marjory stoneman douglas high school in parkland, florida. on february 14 i went through an unimaginable tragedy. everyone at my school did.

but unfortunately we now know what it is like to go through it . i was in my fourth period tv production class when it all started. we were getting ready for the end of the day, we were packing up, we were laughing with my fence dust my friends, we were having a great valentine's day. -- laughing with my friends, we were having a great valentine's day. as we were finishing up we heard the sound go off. weird, becauseas it was a fire drill. earlier in the day we had another one. we assumed it was a valentine's day prank. as we took our time and packed up, we walked down the stairs eventually, and people were joking and laughing, we were taking our time. people took their time. when we got down to the stairs, that's when i realized something was wrong. as i looked behind my school i saw kidsuses --

running. i saw kids running for their life. and a look in their eyes was something that no one should ever have to see. kidsact of the matter is still thought it was a joke. they thought it was a joke because we were told at our school that we were going to have a code red drill with actors and blanks being fired. on there laughing, while other side of my school campus my friends were dying. we had no idea what was going on just a few feet away from us at that time. as we stop people running and grabbed my joking, i four closes friends my class and i said something is wrong here. we have to get back to class. they said don't worry, it's just a drill. i said, i know something is wrong.

moment, something was telling me that something bad was happening. i grabbed my friends and i took them and said we need to get back to class. i said we don't care this is a drill or not. .e have to shovel through kids when we got back to class, i called my brother. i said david, what is going on here? running, whye screaming? and my brother was in another building, and all he could mutter out was, hide, lauren, hide. i heard people screaming behind him. when i got back to my class we hid in a corner. and so many kids thought it was a joke.

televisionnd the where nails are sticking out because they built it a few years ago. as kids still thought it was a from we began to get texts our friends. it started up with one kid saying, what is that noise? wire people screaming? next thing you know, another kid saying, why does it sound my there are guns shots? my friend was screaming and telling us they loved us and the shooter was shooting through their classroom door. they were telling us our friends were on the floor were bleeding. not something that no child,

body in america should have to go through. it's something no one should have to go through. hearing reports while we are stuck in a dark corner of a room having teachers cover the door as our friends were laying on was probably one of the worst parts of the worst parts of that day. as we wait there in silence, one of my friends posted to their newsfeed on their phone. the snapchat's we are getting from our friends in the freshman -- it is something you can never imagine unless you are there. -- iook in people's eyes was holding people i have never talked to hands.

i never realized until that moment how much something as little as saying i love you can make a difference. throughout the whole date, it was a -- throughout the whole day, it was a great day before this. everyone was saying i love you. i was saying i love you to my friends, and that could have said i love time i you to my friends. for some of my friends, it was there last time. we were scared. we heard reports there were multiple shooters. we heard someone come down our hallway. we didn't know who it was. in that moment, all i could think about was my family. people say your life flashes before your life that before

your eyes, but it really does. there, i'm 14, i shouldn't have to think about getting shot at my school. a century that should be safe for every child in america. all i could think about was getting shot and things i haven't said to my family. having to text goodbye to your parents and that you love them is the worst thing imaginable. we heard our door get kicked open. who it was, but thankfully it was the swat team coming to save us. when they came to get us they made us line up in a row. we had so many police officers and swat members pointing guns at us. having to hold my hands above my head at my own school and

knowing something was wrong in the building right next to ours, it was horrific. told a run for our lives with our hands above our heads was horrible. thing was itt, the was almost like a movie. everything seemed to glow. i never knew things could physically glow, sounds could be obsolete. things seem so extreme. people not knowing what was going on. our school has literally become a battleground. kids didn't know what was going on. we just have a bomb basically dropped on our school. the worst part of that entire day was getting home. imagined andways reamed of see my friends are

myself on tv someday. i always thought it would be so cool. but seeing my friends faces are -- collapsing on the cold hard floor on my house knowing that i friends were missing or dead on the floor of my school where i laugh with them was the worst part of that day. things that i went through, the things that my friends went through, having to walk over our friends bodies, no one in america or anywhere in this world should have to go through that. i would just like to add, as part of the never again movement, i would like to elaborate on sunday that hasn't been that public. we need mental health curriculum

in our schools. we never ask or even give the option to take mental health education. i find that absolutely absurd. if anything it is as prevalent as any type of help. it,e were forced to take whether you liked it or not, it could help you. -- and you be yourself or youto seek out help see the sign and someone else and you going talk to them, you go up to them and talk to them, or go to a counselor and say i think they are having a hard time. could person in america prevent subbing might this by learning about mental health, that could make a world of

difference. one thing i would also say is most schools are not addressing the social -- the schools social, emotional, and mental needs of the students. i did a little math at my school. according to our online website we have 18 people in our counseling department. 2016 there are 3158 students. for everything will guidance counselor, there are 175 students. every single guidance counselor, there are 175 students. these are schools across america. how if you're going to talk to -- i went to my

guidance counselor the other day, she didn't know my name. moreed more therapists and trained social workers at our school to talk with us. when that happens, that is when the real change is going to occur. when people learn about what mental health is. thank you. [applause] you, so much, for sharing that. usc. a professor at

has -- to pervade a culture of caring. ron studies include thousands of schools and millions of students countries across the globe. he has spoken about how to create caring schools. he will share some of his thoughts and findings with us. >> i don't know if that's to say thank you for being here. i know you are living it to right now. in termslking too much of the school is very much pardoned with police officers. the message is not something that is done, it is ongoing even at the school.

i wish we could have those folks listening to you right now. >> thank you. >> i'm going to read the first part. i'm a bit emotional. as you heard we are amid a national battle about what our school should be. how to create citizens in a society that are a plus human beings in addition to a plus students, as you so wisely said. having to create a learning and where theyvironment create a better union within our schools and for the future of our fractured society. what weebating not only want our schools to be, but will we want our society to be. our students continually put forth the voices of truth, the present, as well as the future.

we gather here today to focus on the voice of science. physically and mentally injured, or as we have seen too often. intentional and unintentional harm, where students are mandated to attend. that is a major reason we are here. go to the next slide please. we have two visions of our schools. one vision believes that the welcoming,from caring, and support of schools, but focus on school safety, social and emotional learning and community is a great addition to academics.

and community resources for those student struggling with mental health, social obstacles, family, and community strife. we have so many doing that firsthand every day. another vision focuses mainly on the shooting and after the shooting itself, using tools that originated in law enforcement, prison architecture, military strategies, and a more restrictive approach that aims to protect students. not just an opinion or a societal debate. there are well conducted large scale studies conducted all over the world. there's multiple comprehensive reviews covering hundreds of

international studies, large-scale epidemiological studies. and we found in the studies, done over decades and in many different countries, that when schools have positive climates with integrated social and emotional learning support as you requested, they have improved student isolation on , all kinds of bullying, verbal, physical, sexual harassment. students -- these students thrive. our research from all over the world and some of our samples have millions of students in them. it also shows when you have a very good climate, and strong social and emotional measures that are integrated to the dna not just the, programs come in from outside, but what the principal and teacher believes, that you

actually see weapon reductions as well. weapon use, being threatened by a weapon, and even knowing about a weapon on the school grounds. we find that when the schools have a naturally -- and when the schools happen naturally, and when the principals and teachers are a , then you have all these vulnerable groups that have separate programs for them. and a whole array of risk factors, we are talking about violence in our studies. we see a reduction of substance otherd a whole array of things. students invulnerable ,opulations in taiwan, kosovo albania, serbia, those are all countries we can see the reductions in.

culture,try and change again when it is integrated in the school you see positive things. communities being built, empowerment, connectedness that goes way beyond just fixing a problem. we see in our most recent reviews that academics are actually better. butchose not just violence -- the most recent work shows it decreases inequality by reducing the achievement gap. so what happens when you integrate these things into the dna of the school?

after seven years, this is 145 schools that were part of a undead grant -- part of a funded grant. we also have a holistic school approach. climateation of moving and resources of the schools in guns a 55% reduction carrying on school grounds as reported by the students. and threats of an injury. 40% reduction of students actually seeing a weapon on school grounds or knowing about it. and a 44% reduction of gang affiliation. -- if we a lot of time have 20 to 30% of kids in california in the last 20 years actually report that emily look at those schools, we have the wea for all 10,000 schools,

see that actually affects climate, knowing there is a weapon. knowing there is a weapon on campus makes you feel differently about your peers, how you feel about the school, about going. the way we have done this in is we have taken a national public health strategy, and i suggest we do the same thing here. we have book fires that we put out a captured work week have done all around the world. based on student voice and empowerment. we use those surveys to bring to hear what the students actually think. teacher's voice back to the teachers and have

what the teachers and the have done -- and we the same with cafeteria workers, yardage, to build upon this. to resources are matched their needs and desires. some -- each get something cater to their grounds . statistict take the of between 20 and 30 percent of , we know what each of the schools are right now. we can figure out which ones we have, and instead of just targeting students or people, we can look at schools that have very high rate, low climate, and provide more resources, provide more care, provide more training, give the students more voice.

i'm talking about doing this at scale. -- ithough it happened has to happen one student at a time. one thing we found in our work here and in israel and in chile is we have to pay special attention to maybe some of -- maybe the other speakers will speak about this, students and teachers who have obsessions with arsenals. this has come up over and over again in our quantitative and qualitative work. what we are advocating for is not kicking everyone out but actually providing support from a very young age and going on for a long time. i just want to raise this particular issue of alternative schools. there are many things that could happen in terms of working

support. when this happens multiple times we have a system of alternative schools. the climate and the resources has not been looked at carefully. the climate does not look very good for the california schools we are looking at. those things apply especially to this group that has been excluded from public schools for these kinds of reasons. we haven't higher systems in special ed. communities goals that have been unattended to and neglected. i would like to make sure we stop this. here, the i said method is in the mapping. all proceeds are donated to anti-bullying efforts. this is the welcoming book. this is how you create good climates. particularly for students in

transition. i would like to thank you -- actually one more. these are extra resources if you need them. i would like to thank you, because you're the reason why we are here, it is your activism and your voice. [applause] >> thank you, so much. i am confident that each one of can remember times in our school years one experienced trauma, depression, disappointment. it's not hard to identify a student who is going through such a period at those times. not -- tortant to non-judgmentally inquire and offer guidance.

-- identified needs and how to respond to them would help us understand. >> thank you very much. i also want to thank lauren and ron. you don't think i'm on? i will just talk louder. i would like to thank lauren and work i have done in mental health and in climate as -- i haverly morning learned more always from young people than anybody else. and a book i put out that was written before the events, i talked about the most under tapped resources in our schools. i've learned so much more the last few weeks, but also have

been learning from black lives matter and the young people talking about these issues. few.t added a arehe one hand schools relatively safe place. to reduce thetion likelihood of aggression and violence. schools are contained places. what lauren is talking about is actually possible. we can make schools safe. just physically safe, it is emotionally safe. sociales require acts of learning. it's also how we allocate resources. there may be someplace where one needs to invest some money in security personnel.

but oftentimes at that the expense of another counselor, of a mental health person. it's very important understand these things are connected. schools can be made safer by reducing the capacity -- while students and staff need emotional and identity safety. that's emotional, physical, and identity safety. -- emotional, physical, and identity safety. nowvery different right other than the weaponry is much more sophisticated and there are other things like the fact people can experience these horrible events in real time and be further traumatized. the government pulled together an expert panel to identify what are the warning signs.

at some point this work ought to be updated. what we know now is enough to actually had off these problems. i will talk about this when we are in the caring supportive environment ron was talking about. these early-morning signs must be addressed and assessed in a culturally appropriate manner and in a way that minimizes harms and maximizes -- anytime you intervene you have a risk of harm. so safety, often times we think about physical safety and we think about that moment. but i think about valentine's day and the class beforehand. i think about when do you feel emotionally safe? when do people feel psychologically safe?

if someone is different in any --, wouldn't as we go to black lives matter with young people talking about when do you feel like you're being treated in a fair critical manner. when are you safe from not just short-term problems but long-term problems. problems that can happen when the cafeteria is unsafe or you are afraid to go to the washroom. if we want to use warning signs, and i think we can, schools need to each develop the capacity to identify and assess the response in a manner that reduces the in -- reduces the -- problems. and the impact of those problems

. in lauren's class in school, the connections you talked about, what we know are also supportive. as her if it gets everything you have, and we can only guess, when you have a parent, when you , that just buffers the effect of horrific things. we want to have those supports. this can be best done in a caring manner. it's what we do universally for everybody. the care ron was talking about. it is social and emotional learning for everybody. it's support for teachers through good and equitable instruction. and warning signs can help us if we do it right.

they see their friends and -- in ways that they don't see. thereat at the same time are at higher levels of risk who actually need much more intensive interventions. and some people who are exhibiting behaviors that require immediate threats or suicide assessments, because we cannot wait to matter what. i just want to add quickly that what we also know is if you do these things you don't only make schools safer, you do things we make schools more academically productive. you help people become more healthy in the long run. my research is consistent with ron's. these things are not a

trade-off. people feele young with class, the more people can handle these issues, the more they are able to engage in deeper learning. when we do this and when we use warning signs we have to make sure we minimize unintended consequences. punishing people. criminalization. icna or are there. the criminalization of behavior rather than providing people with the service they need. create whators can should iearn -- why tell them something when i can't trust them to do something in a responsible way? at the same time it wastes

resources, doing things that can be handled preventively and providing more resources for counselors. quickly, what are these warning signs? remember here, any one sign at any one moment is anything more than a signal. you are looking at someone who through his life has exhibited warning signs. but excessive feelings of isolation, being a victim of violence, loan school interest and poor academic performance. the expression of violence, uncontrolled anger, history of discipline problems. a history of violence and aggressive behavior. intolerance of differences and prejudicial attitudes. affiliation with gangs, anppropriate axis to

possession and use of firearms. these are not just my lists. it goes to the expert panel. alone all they are our signals. we have to do them in a way that we make sure they don't do harm, that we understand what we are seeing in the context, including the fact that these may be set up in behaviors in part of the school. .e need to avoid stereotypes we have to understand that students typically have multiple warning signs. acting,to assess before and that requires a mental health expertise. we don't want use the signs as a checklist. and we don't want to confuse early warning signs with imminent warning signs or signs that require immediate action.

the early-morning signs to provide students with help. we did that already, i think. i think we can go to the next slide. let's think about where he can intervene. i think a piece to intervene as student. if the student has an anger problem we want to cook them with the skills to do it that anger. we now know as people social, emotional, and cognitive skills are so in external bleeding inextricably-- so interrelated. who i am is not just the product of myself, it is also the people

around me and the experiences we have. maybe we need to intervene in my classroom with my teacher, with my friends and family. intervention is supposed to be supportive, not harmful. we need to think about the entire school environment. and as we will hear in other places and later on as we have to think about societal factors, the access to guns in our society, the messages the people receive in our society really do matter. last slide, please. let me end by saying we have decades now a research. the have decades of successful federal interventions.

qualitylemented with and implemented at scale actually make a difference? authorized by congress through --safe now you have a graphic that was introduced that i'm happy to share with people. school grants went to 11 states across the country to use -- and the local evaluations that were done at each of the 11 states showed that in all cases when people were intentional in types of ways that ron were talking about, they did things like improved attendance, improve academics and some others, reduce instances that make people feel unsafe in others. trying to doust new things. i think in the case of the warning signs, we have the accumulation of work that really

provides us with messages, which really suggests and indicate that we can make our society and , and that doing that really requires that three-tiered model that i talked about. coordination of people. it involves actively listening to and using the voices of the young people. it requires being culturally competent and culturally responsive. and it requires a vision that we got from lauren in terms of aspirations. of our children and youth in our society deserve is a school where they can be expanded, where they can develop collective resilience, not just individual recipients. thank you very much.

[no audio] -- [applause] >> thank you, david. afternoon -- in the aftermath of columbine, social scientists ran the asking how we can apply, how we could apply threat assessment principles to schools without increasing rates of student unrest and explosion, and at the same time promote safety. they developed a model for school-based threat assessment that has been rigorously evaluated and used throughout the country. >> i will even turn on my mic. thank you for the opportunity to be here.

talk about evidence-based school threat assessment. i will talk about a model my colleagues and i developed about 18 years ago. we have been doing research since then and potential value, not just preventing violence in schools but preventing violence in general. our decisions about school safety have to be based on a careful analysis of givencts and not just be by fears and emotions, however important they are. that schoolnize violence is a small part of a much larger problem of gun violence. it would be a terrible mistake to assume the only problem we have is in our schools. want to say we need to place much more emphasis on prevention .han in security one prevention strategy is evidence-based school threat assessment.

school shootings have had a traumatic effect on survivors, family members and all of society that had to witness this and think about this and contemplated. one of the effects is to convince a somehow we need to turn our schools and to your tresses, that we must spend billions of dollars on security measures. you that isggest to missing the total picture, the larger picture and will lead us in the wrong way. we have two processes going on. we have a process of recovery from trauma, which is important and must be careful for the individual that individuals, such as lauren. we also have to have the process of stepping back from the trauma and saying what is the most effective and efficient thing we can do to keep our young people safe? and keep them not only in school but out of school.

it surrenders to think there have been over 300 shooting since the sandy hook shooting. i think this chart leaves out something important, which is how many shootings we have had outside of school as well. you willlittle digging the laste me, that in five years we have average over year.0 shootings every we had half a million shootings were someone was killed or injured outside of our schools. for every shooting in a school we have 1600 shootings outside of schools. i'm interested in keeping our young people safe and the people in our communities. we averaged 22 young people who are killed every year over the past 20 years. we average over 1000 young people were killed outside of school.

even if we spent the billions of dollars that business people tell us it would take to make our schools absolutely impregnable, that would stop only less than 1/10 of 1% of the shootings that take place. we me suggest to you that if put a policeman in every single school we may stop one shooting in one building. if we put another counselor in that school, we have the potential to help young people long before they go down the pathway to violence and prevent shootings all across our community. is gunl problem violence, not school violence. at where gun violence occurs, where homicide occurs, some hamas -- some colleagues and i looked at statistics. and we down at the bottom of the list are schools. schools are one of the safest places in our community.

we want to make our schools safer. let me point out that restaurants have 10 times as many shootings and homicides as do our schools. anyone who recommends that we need to arm our teachers logically should be advocating serversneed to arm our two. and put metal protectors at the entrance of our schools. those places are 10 times more dangerous than our schools. we have to do more than just security. we cannot turn every poll of space, every open area into a fortress. after the sandy hook shooting folks told us they spent -- they spent about $5 billion on security measures. maybe it never would be enough. we need to recognize that when that $5 billion go to security measures, school budgets are not elastic, that money has to come

from somewhere. what i have seen in the school systems as they have to cut back on student support services. under counseling and mental health services because the money is going to security measures. the other negative reaction we have to fear school violence is an increase in the use of zero-tolerance discipline. the idea that we have to get tough to send a strong message by kicking kids out of school. since the school shootings we have seen a racking up of ofpension policies, exclusionary discipline that had documented negative effects on juvenile dropout rates, juvenile court rates, and the school to prison pipeline. we need to be careful we don't react to school shootings by making the problem worse by using exclusionary discipline and increasing the drop-off

that kids rate of kid turning to crime. and the rate of kids turning to crime. we need to think prevention has a start long before there is a gunman at your door. who is that person before he picks up the gun? who is a person in high school, middle school, and elementary school. what could we have done differently? enforcement, the fbi, the secret service working with the u.s. department of education recommended the use of threat assessment in schools. we weren't really sure what it meant. a group of colleagues and i have been trying to identify threat

assessment. it's for kids who make threats. we know kids make threats a lot. mostly they don't mean them. we know some threats are serious. threat assessment in schools is a process of problem solving the bottom prevention, working with young people who have -- it begins with people care about one another in school. family members, friends, teachers recognize someone is unhappy. maybe a threatening statement. situation,ok at a assessed the seriousness of the and what actions ought to

be into blunted -- hot to be implemented. -- actions ought to be implemented. overreact.nt to we want to follow through with intervention. we feel tested them and disseminated them and had 17 years and 11 studies in evaluating their outcomes. schools need to avoid overreacting the threats that are not serious. the chief example is this young who shaped his pop tart into the shape of a gun. gilly thing dangerous about this young boys behavior is what he ate -- the only thing dangerous about this young boy's behaviors what he ate.

also the opposite error of under reaction in a truly serious case. we have seen more school shootings have been prevented have been averted that have taken place and thesed concern, work school authorities who listened then were responsive, who took the threat seriously and investigated it, and took appropriate action. in threat assessment we try to determine why a student made a threat to we can prevent it from being carried out. i mentioned we have done a lot of studies. i will spend the next three hours going through each of our studies [laughter] 'm sure i will have your

rapt attention. you can review any of these on the virginia school violence project. let me give you a summary of our research. according to our studies 99% of threats are not carried out. no shootings,d stabbings, or homicides, they were fights with no serious injury. schools administering threat assessments don't administer harsh consequences except in very extreme cases. only 1% of cases result in a student being expelled or an arrest. schools show a decline in the use of suspension. racial disparities in those schools are reduced or absent. our most current study found there were remote -- there were no differences in twin black, white and hispanic students in the ways they were suspended or expelled. they also use counseling more often and have a positive school climate.

♪ ic.t's great mus i guess that means i'm nearing the end of my time, when they start playing music for you. [laughter] by saying, after the sandy hook shooting virginia actually mandated threat assessment in all schools. found threat assessment needs to be adapted but it can be a process that minimizes targeting students and provides healthy students. all this and a larger in anctive is contained eight point plan that many of us here devised after the parkland shooting. control, has gun school climate improvement, threat assessment and improved mental health services for young people. you contain it -- you can obtain

it from our website. school violence is a small part of a march larger problem we need to address comprehensively. schools are much safer than the public believes and safer than it feels. but the threat assessment is one canany important tools we use in schools to respond to student threats and prevent violence in schools and communities. thank you, very much. [applause] thank you. david. since hiswn david days at the yale child study center years ago. experience,through far-reaching insight and study, more than anyone else i know, effectively,most therapeutically and humanistic lee respond to school crises. david?

david: thank you. if you could put the first slide up. advance to the next slide. i want to begin by acknowledging their is a wide range of reactions that may be seen after school shooting. most appreciated by the general public archer medical reactions and disorders. but those are not all you will see. someonedren who lost they care about might be the predominant issue. i remember responding to one community shooting that occurred, and one man had the unfortunate circumstance that the person on either side of him was killed but he was uninjured. i met with him several weeks after the shooting. he had come back to school once and was unable to remain there. i asked him why he wasn't receiving counseling and he said, i had trauma symptoms for several days but it wasn't aware of what was happening in the shooting, and those symptoms went away. i had trouble sleeping, i was jittery, i was distracted. but he said that is better now and i don't want to talk about the shooting anymore.

i asked him why did you leave school and he said, it didn't you write to be there without her. he was on a date with a girl he wanted to marry. and being in school without his girlfriend didn't seem right. and i said to him, maybe you are grieving the death of your girlfriend. said,ked surprised and that's it. it summit he is willing to talk to me about that, i will go for counseling. i won't talk about the shooting. so the issue is, it is not just one set of actions. crisis is followed by a secondary wave of stressors. as an example, after school shooting there may be a drop in enrollment at the school for the number of reasons. students may transfer because of discomfort returning or remaining. the students doing well may also transfer, because teachers and other students who are struggling may be impacting their academic career.

future students and their families are often reluctant to join the school. and the drop in enrollment then has a financial impact. budgeting schools is based on the number of schools there and when they have less students, they have less money. i have even seen property values drop in these towns and that leads to a drop in income through taxes from property, as well as the inability to pass tax levies. xed schools have fi expenses, and they cut school services when they are struggling, and you can see how that leads to a downward spiral. but it is also everything that precedes the school crisis. major crisis events also uncover prior trauma or loss, even if it is completely unrelated to the event. thet a phone call left of las vegas shooting, from a school i provided training to before hand. and they said, we looked for this and found it. we were fortunate none of our

students were at the concert and none of the members of our community died in that event. heree have a student sobbing because she's afraid her mother is going to die of cancer. so the issue is, you uncover other concerns and students and staff. go to the next slide. unfortunately, there is a lot to uncover great trauma and loss is just as common in children as adults. one in 20 children in our country will experience the death of a parent, and nine out of 10 will experience the death of a close relative or friend by the time the complete high school. in contrast to this high prevalence of loss in the lives of children, training among educators in this area is limited. less than 10% of educators receive even a single lesson on how to support grieving children. teachers report this is the main reason they don't invite support to grieving students. they are afraid they may say or do the wrong thing and upset children or make matters worse, so they often say nothing.

but saying nothing says an awful lot to children. it lets them know you are either unaware, i'm, unwilling or unable to help. i don't want to fault the educators. to recognize school professionals are impacted by these events at least as much as the students, and often more so. i remember talking to the superintendent of the school system that had a bus accident that led to the deaths of multiple students two years prior. he became tearful and he looked at me and said, it still bothers me that these kids died. shouldsaid, maybe i retire. and i said, if you ever wake up in the morning and don't care that the kids died, you have to retire. the issue is a low bar, in my opinion, to be a leader in a school system. let's go to the next slide. it is important to provide support to students and staff until recovery is completed, and that may take many months and often years.

if the timeframe for federal funding for recovery isn't aligned with timeline for recovery, and the grants often and too soon, the amount of funding is often less than the scope of need. new york city schools conducted a needs assessment of students in grades four through 12 about six months after 9/11. they found approximately one out of four students surveyed reported symptoms consistent with at least one mental health disorder. that included it separation anxiety disorder, panic attacks, agoura phobia, ptsd or major depressive disorder. that suggested more than a quarter of the sister -- more than a quarter of the students in that school system needed counseling. additionally, nearly nine out of 10 students reported at least one trauma symptom six months after 9/11, still persisting.

and the majority of students who work self reporting system -- self reporting symptoms and daily impairment in their also reported they did not seek mental health counseling despite the fact that throughs help available funding from fema. so we can't rely on individual treatment services alone to address the broad range of needs after school shooting. the school response is not the individualviding evaluation, referral, and treatment to everybody in a school building. you need to look at additional approaches to support children beyond the traditional mental health service model. teachers, administrators and staff can have a positive and profound impact on children by providing compassionate support, as well as identify children who need additional mental health services. the preferred model to reflect a compassionate, supported school

theunity is to educate child and build their capacity to respond long-term. we have seen excellent examples of resiliency and strength among students and staff. -- i had the opportunity to spend much of the week in broward county, meeting with staff and administrators. but no matter how resilient one is, it doesn't mean they are not experiencing stress. it simply means they have the capacity to cope with the traumatic loss they are experiencing. they need help as well. i think the students have come -- students have done a job by coming forward and recognizing the needs of their peers, but they are not representative of all the members of that community. and there are members of the community that are particularly struggling to the point they cannot speak about it. and they see other examples of kids who appear to be doing much better, and that can even add further to their distress, the sense that they are not

competent. not been ang has priority in teacher preparation, coursework or professional development. instead, it is often sought only in the aftermath of a major event. in the disaster field we refer to this as just-in-time training. but to be honest, it is not in time. i remember being put in touch with the parent and educator in -- inw county community the newtown community. he had a child attending sandy hook and was struggling and he wanted advice. i spent an hour on the phone with him and at the end of the call he said, i really want to thank you or this. this is the first insight that i have gotten that is practical. i don't want to be judgmental, but i want to ask why wasn't there someone like you in my community sooner, brought in by the school system to give me this advice? and i said, there was. the shooting happened on friday and on monday morning i did and

in service with the entire school system. you were either home with your family, which i completely understand, or more likely, you were there and don't remember a word that i said. but i went over the same things i just went over in the phone call. we need to recognize preparedness for not just responding to a crisis, but preparing to recover. we have to invest the resources. these skills and strategies are to just important communities such as newtown, connecticut, or parkland and coral springs, florida. i have her be how shocking it was that violence such as these inotings could occur communities such as that. it reminded me of a presentation i conducted an an urban community known for gang violence. i talk in that community about how communities characterized by chronic violence and loss, the students don't get used to the death of their peers. although they may stop seeking support from adults because they have come to believe adults in their community are either

unable or unwilling to stop, prevent or help them cope with these events, and this falsely leads people to believe they are not impacted anymore. spoke up andaff said i didn't understand the community, and that here it was normal for children to be part of gangs. and he added, in this community it is normal for children to murder other children. and i looked at him and said, that is never normal and once we call it normal, it means we stopped doing something about it. i'm not going to be ok about that. i don't think any of us should. so yes, i think we should be outraged a school shooting happened in these communities whene should be outraged it happens anywhere in our community or our country. the solutions we seek need to be broadly relevant that apply to all schools in our country. was thatmendation congress and the education department should award funding to states to implement and

evaluate training and professional development to teach educators basic skills and providing support to grieving students and students in crisis. they will see those students every day in their classrooms. they should also establish statewide requirements related to teacher certification and recertification. a similar recommendation was in the report from the disaster subcommittee of the federal advisory commission and the sandy hook advisory commission. this training should address the trauma of bereavement on children and their learning. some likely reactions that they might see among themselves and others in school, and most important, practical first day,r bereavement and academic accommodations.

i want to end my comments by highlighting one free resource that is available. the new york life foundation convened 10 leading professional organizations to form a coalition to perform grieving -- coalition to support grieving students, with the goal of remedying the gap so that no child has to grieve in isolation. this is a listing of the 10 leading organizations that were founding members of the coalition, representing both major teachers unions, school administrators, superintendent, school counselors, psychologists and social workers. if you go to the next slide, there are 30 more organizations that have endorsed the material and added their logos to it. american academy of pediatrics, the boys and girls club, save the children and many more. and if you go to the next slide, we have had another 30 members that joined as friends of the

coalition. so the coalition is now up exterior organizations. materials that i have left ear, i want to add they are publicly available, they are free of charge, you can get them a greetingstudents.org. wide range of materials and you can see materials for our center that provides free technical support and consultation. thank you. [applause] daniel webster. in these times of great division and acrobat, it is -- division and acrimony, it is hard to find somebody with the single-minded goal of promoting the safety and well-being of all. david is one such person -- daniel, i am sorry. we do have too many davids are.

you, very much. it's an honor to be part of the panel. about -- therek are a number of reasons why we are here but i don't think we would be here if we didn't have a problem with guns in the united states. de cornellw set thee tabley for me well, noting that we are safe in our schools mostly. we need to make people safe in all places. all of the data i have will not be specific to schools, but i think the concepts are transferable within schools or .xternally thist to point out through slide how abnormal we are when you compare the u.s. to other

high income western democracies. this is simply plotting the ratio of our homicide rates involving on people, versus that of the average, the weighted average of these other nations. the yellow bar is our overall homicide rate, which is in the five to 14 group, a little more than four times, four times higher than the average of these other high income countries. it is 15 to 24 age group, 14 times higher. the next two bars, the red bar being the homicide rate with guns, and the great bar being bar all other -- the grey being with all other means. you can see from this slide what the issue is. sides involving

five to 14-year-olds with firearms are nearly 20 times higher and nearly 50 times higher, 50 times higher for ages 15 to 24. we do not have unusually high rates of mental illness and our population, among our young. we don't have unusually high rates of bullying. what we have is unusually high rates of access, ready access to lethal weaponry. next slide, please. evidenced in this next, very simple slide. 88%, if you look at victims of gun homicides of high school age, 14 to 18, 88% die with firearms. there is a real racial imbalance in what this looks like as well. over nine times the rate of firearms homicides among blacks

versus whites, whereas among suicides, and this age group of 14 to 18, the white rate of homicide is twice that of blacks. next slide, please. i'm going to briefly go through four main issues connected to gun policies. one has to do with our standards for legal gun ownership. the second has to do with mechanisms to keep her him and people from having guns. the third has to do with concealed carry and public finally,of guns, and the fourth has to do with the design of guns with respect to assault weapons. let's start with this basic fact. i don't think most can actually axis,ll enough, the but this is our age-specific homicide rates, and you can see how dramatically the escalating adolescent years.

the years that they peak are the years between 18 and 20 years old, and they really don't dramatically decline until mid-20's. so this is a very relevant age as a relates to win the young man who committed the horrendous act of violence at marjory stoneman douglas high school acquired his firearms and carried out the act. next slide, please. states and the district of columbia you have to be at least 21 years of age to legally consume a beer. 12 states, actually maybe 13 because of florida, set their age for minimum legal age for having a handgun, at 21. the florida conversation in policymaking was focused on long guns.

what people are missing from the discussion, unfortunately, is that while you have to be 21 to handgun from a licensed dealer and have a background check and record, in if you just go online or a gun show and have a private seller, you only have to be 18. so that makes a lot of logical sense, doesn't it? i think we have some serious things to address as a relates to minimum age for legal firearms. next, please. i talk about standards, and this is a simple way to illustrate this. on the left represents the 13 states with the weakest legal standards for being able thosesess a gun, and in states, if you look at the individuals who are in state prisons because they committed

violent acts with firearms, 60% were illegal to possess the gun when they committed that act of violence. so much of our conversation of a grouplicy bifurcates one as, everybody is law-abiding because they are legal to have a firearm, and there is another group that is hardened terminals. if you look at the states with our weakest gun laws, that's not what it looks like with respect to who commits acts of violence. i will explain more about that in just a minute. it also want to compare this with all the other states. onell the other states, third of the individuals who commit acts of violence with guns and are imprisoned, were legal to possess their guns. so there is a real difference across our states, depending on where they set standards for people being able to legally possess guns.

basically, what that difference between the week-law states and the strong-law states, what explains that difference. witha play, it has to do prohibitions, and these are temporary prohibitions for young this 18 to 28 in group, or8 to 20 age individuals who committed serious crimes that were adjudicated in the juvenile system. all the things we identified that most explain this were things that, in these arenger-standard states temporary prohibitions, they are not lifelong prohibitions. and that is because the risk is not static over time? -- over time, ok?

that's an important standard that applies to safety and fairness regarding how we establish effective gun laws. whenever there is a mass shooting, the conversation is, this is all about mental illness. well, in mass shootings you have a higher rate of people going through very specific mental illness episodes. our problemook at largely, of violence in the united states, the best epidemiologic evidence suggests you can explain about 4% of our violence problem due to mental illness. so if someone brilliant enough could come up with some vaccine to completely eliminate all mental illness within our entire country, we would have a whopping 4% reduction in our violence rate. so, while mental illness is a very important thing, an important part of public health

as has been discussed, it is not going to address our only alence problem, small portion is a relates to interpersonal violence. suicide is a completely different matter, very important with respect to suicide. so, in the months soon after some academic experts and other groups actually met at johns hopkins to sort through the very difficult andes, both on the science legal aspects of what you do about this issue of mental illness and guns. i have to say i was skeptical anything useful was going to come from this, but what actually emerged was one of the most powerful things i think i have seen in done policy in my the formationt, of the consortium for risk-based firearm policy. whenoked at the data and

we said, how can we have the biggest impact on violent crime with guns, we said, mental illness is not going to take us very far on this. what is the best predictor of violence, is prior violence. so the group came up with very specific recommendations. some of them are now really being, a bright light is shined upon them, in part because of , of extreme-risk protection orders. that's one recommendation that came from that, that really recognizes that risk and crises emerge rapidly and our prohibitions or conditions for keeping guns from people are not as flexible as they need to be. and that is one policy that does that. the other recommendations that flowed from the consortium have to do with temporary prohibitions of people convicted of misdemeanor crimes of violence.

studies that show significant reductions in violent crime, 29% in one study, and reduction in intimate partner homicide of 25% as well. another important risk factor in some states address but most do not, is repeated problems with alcohol abuse and alcohol-related crimes. an incredibly high risk for serious act of violence in net subgroup. -- we do notnot ite a lot of data but that should be a priority in the years to come. ino addressed by this group, part where the extreme-risk protection order emerged from, is looking at current policies with firearm prohibitions for domestic-violence restraining orders, that when you expand those two temporary orders and dating partners that you have significant reductions and

dating homicides. describe the most effective ways to keep guns from individuals who are prohibited, and that is through a system of comprehensive background checks, ideally as part of a licensing system. i will show you a few slides. this is simply, there are different ways to get guns. you can go through law enforcement, which is the permitting system. you can go to gun dealers, who are sometimes shady, and there are other options as well. here is what we found when missouri repealed its permitting relicensing law for handguns in 2007. is the difference between missouri's homicide rate versus all the other states, the other 49 states. you can see a dramatic jump in 2008, precisely after the law was repealed. city rise ina

firearm-related suicides as well. when you put it all together in a variety of forms and analysis the control for everything you can control for, you get about a 20% increase in firearm homicides connected to this, and a 16% increase in suicides. when missouri adopted the same kind of policy that missouri repealed, we found a near opposite effect, this time in the protective direction. 40% lower rate of firearm homicides over the first 10 years, and 29% over 18 years. again, and a significant reduction in suicide. come to assault weapons later, i'm going to show you one data not get, if you will, as it relates to concealed carry. have had dramatic changes in concealed carry laws over the past 30 years. this gives us a look of the map

-- look at the map of how this changes, with the orange and yellow signaling very restrictive issuing of permits to carry concealed weapons in 1990. next slide. where wehere we are in are right now, and in the vast majority of our map there is little or no restrictions related to concealed carry. what has been the effect of that? the solution to problems with bad by -- bad guys with guns is good guys and gals with guns out there. what have we learned from that social experiment? be a simplede would explanation of this. this is from research from stanford and what you see at the bottom is, with each year a state has a right to carry law in place, violent crime grows with each year, and more permits, and more good guys and

gals with guns out there. a lowering of violent crime. we see it growing greater and greater. i will end my discussion there. we can come back to assault weapons perhaps in this discussion, if we have time. [applause] >> thank you, daniel. i want to recognize dr. diana fishbein from penn state, our codirector and one of the creators of this organization that made this all possible. thank you, diana. our next speaker is julie phillips pollock. dr. phillips? i'm sure you have heard over and over again that the worst thing that can happen to a parent, and i am a parent, is the death of your child, particularly a death

that occurred so prematurely and senselessly. i'm so sorry to have to repeat that truism today. i suspect that the spirit of your daughter, 18-year-old meadow pollock, is what inspires and strengthened you and your husband in doing all that you can to put an end to gum -- to gun rampages that have occurred in way too many schools, schools from places that are now hot -- that are now, sadly, household names. julie: i am here for meadow and butnt to show her pictures, it want to mention to you the names of the other 16 people killed that day. i had a chance to speak to their families since that time. l hadef, scott beagle,

martin takei and we honor them, feis, and i like to say he got a hero, he used his body as a shield read jamie gothenburg. , another hero, a coach who went in unarmed. luke lawyer. , she and meadow were trapped on the third floor. meadow had been shot four times and she was stuck outside a classroom. the classroom doors were locked and she was stuck in a hallway and she laid on top of cara who had artie been shot, and he shot them both five more times, killing them both. oliver. delano petty. meadow pollack. helena ramsey. alexander schachter.

peter ring. this is a picture of meadow with her grandmother. we all went on a family cruise for 80th birthday. this is her grandfather who died a few years ago they had a very close relationship. and herbrother, hunter, ecc.in, ba aa family vacation at the cabbage patch kids museum in georgia. and, at hockey game. and, san francisco obviously. that's hunter at one of our favorite ice cream places. her with picture of her father, i think i have a few more of those. meadow and andrew.

this is something that was put her cousins and friends made collages in pictures and decorated these rocks, and now it is displayed in our house during the shiva. this is just before homecoming. this is all of us cooking in the kitchen. this is a picture of meadow with her brothers and cousins. this is actually about the time, surrounded by her family. i just wanted to and with this nd with, -- wanted to eb this picture, a picture of her boyfriend, brandon, at the end of her funeral. a meadow pollack's mother. i'm just one of the people love

her. she was a beautiful, 18-year-old girl with an amazing family, great parents, grandparents, two brothers, stepsister and many in scum uncles and cousins. she had a boyfriend of four years, rendon. and really her entire community loved her. she planned on going to university and she had many more plans for the future beyond that. in my work as an emergency physician, i work in a level one trauma center and over and over again i witnessed the effects of violence and i treat the effects of violence. had toy times, i have tell other parents that their child was murdered and that they did not survive. it is easier when i maintain clinical detachment and allows me to treat my other patients who are still alive. you just have to keep going. before this, i never have been personally affected by violence, so none of us were really prepared for this. not at all.

in the past, i tried to advise the girls how to cake -- how to take care of themselves. for honig i gave meadow one of those loud alarms to use. told her-- i always where to park at night. i have we sprayed non-americans would have a serious accident. but this kind of thing was not on our radar as all. the day that all of our lives forever changed was valentine's day, my husband and i were on a bike ride and we started getting phone calls there was a shooting at douglas. and initially i thought, there was no way it could be meadow. what are the odds that it could be her in a school that is so big, 3100 students, how could it possibly be her? and then, the slow torture started. it lasted 13 hours while we waited for final confirmation. i was searching trauma centers where i worked in calling my

coworkers, sending pictures, hoping we would find her at the hospital. i started to really worry when a , i spoke toof mine him, he's a director for ems, he called and told me about all the bodies that were still in the school, on the floor, that he was looking at. by, weas the hours went knew that she had to be there. we had all hoped meadow just lost her phone or was detained in all of this, but as time went by we knew it had to be more than that. suddenly, i developed a newly just a cool framework. how do i tell her grandmother that she recently lost her that that is probably where meadow was two, and i was in the car for her to come and be with us. brother andtell her your husband, who are away, that they should come home because after so much time it had to be

her? somehowhat i could but i temporarily relieved the pain i was watching her mother go but mental anguish is physically difficult to watch. ie day after the shooting, got more logistical type of questions. how do we get the body released by the medical examiner? when should we have the funeral? where should we pick for a cemetery? and as we walked around the cemetery, we had to pick a spot. and how do you pick the best plot? i don't know. thankfully our rabbi o was there constantly with us, and he guided us through this time and helped us with decisions that nobody wants to have to make. we were aware of what happened to us but it was hard to imagine

what had happened to other people, and it was hard to even imagine there was something more going on than what we were experiencing. we hading the shiva thousands of people come to our house. i talked to other families and listened to how they made their funeral arrangements, and met their children, their surviving children, and how they were reacting to their own loss. thousands of people came to our house to honor meadow, some i don't even know, most we did. our family really pulled together to care for each other. a lot of volunteers donated theira lot of volunteers donated their time, and it was really a collective effort. and the pictures there, the balloons and the decorations and things that we had at our house. many of meadow's friends gathered at our house and i theird talking about

experiences, similar to what lauren had, and their fear of returning to school was palpable. for the first time, i hadn't thought of it too much before, i realized how vulnerable our kids are, and that this wasn't the first school shooting. a friend of mine from medical school was at the shooting in paducah, kentucky. that was 20 years ago now. i spoke to her and to really broke my heart that 20 years later, that this was happening and i had not even thought about that it could be something that we could live through. so it begs the question, why do we allow it? as i listened to the students in my community that were there my house, that were afraid to go back to school, they were just asking for somebody to tell them they were safe, and there

were literally begging for their lives. so i think we do have to face and idly reality that children are not safe in schools. there are going to be predators that don't respect school boundaries. was to case, his goal maximize casualties, like he was in a videogame. it is not fair for a student to have to worry that she could be hunted and murdered in a hallway, like meadow was. how can a student focus on learning, and how can a teacher focus on educating, when they are worried that this will happen to them? it is a problem for the teachers, that they are not secure as well. in the past month i have focused energy on the issues facing schools. when you lose a child, there is no sleeping. i ami am fueled by the injusticf meadow's death, especially after i learned there were over 200 previous shootings, and i understand up to 300 depending on how you calculate the numbers. since then i've listened to students, parents, teachers and law enforcement.

i spoke to parents from columbine and sandy hook and i read the research and their ioposals, and my husband and have been doing a lot of work trying to understand this and see what we can do to improve things. in that time we have met with secretaries of education, health and human services and homeland a few of us met with the president and in florida i spoke with governor scott and state legislators. i do feel like lawmakers are listening and things are being changed. very proud toam say that my family with other families went to tallahassee, and went to pass the safety bill, 7206. no bill is perfect but it is a comprehensive bill. it includes funding for school , reasonable gun control measures, threat

assessments, access to mental like warrenhools, mentioned that is a big part of it. they will have a mental health personality school right now. the counselors are just there arecareer guidance, they not mental health experts. and it also improves andunication between dcs police and the schools. that's important because there has been a lack of communications, in this instance in particular. in my work as an emergency physician, we treat critical patients in a systematic manner. airway, thenss breathing, then circulation. we then moved to treat the acute condition. later down the line we consider secondary prevention, which is treatment of early disease such as diabetes. at alln lastly but not least importantly, diet and vaccination, primary prevention.

that what public health is all about, but we are discussing here. so i feel that we need to apply similar strategy here. our abcs in this situation are security. i feel like we need a secure perimeter. it is way too easy to walk on campuses in america with a weapon of some kind, a goner whatever else. and it is time for security analysts to evaluate the security we have and implement changes that would make the school more like entering a courthouse. it doesn't have to be a fortress. you don't have to have armed security and every door but it could be similar to this building that we walked into, even a little's security. little less security, a few cameras at the entrances and exit 10 a few things -- i'm not a security expert but the homeland security department is willing to go to the schools and make recommendations.

i think after the teachers and students are secured, the focus can turn to secondary prevention such as treating the school environment, like the mental-health initiatives. and lastly we can address primary prevention the treats society as a whole. when i have sadly witnessed over the last 20 years is the debate on gun control after each shooting, which is a valid question. but this approach has done nothing to secure our kids. this lack of action is what killed meadow. i believe gun control is an important topic and should be included in the discussion of primary prevention, but i do not believe we should let politics and bureaucracy stand in the way of securing our schools. again. i have heard people described concerned that spending money on security would take money away from funding mental health. i don't think we have to compromise, i think we can have both and our children are worth

it. people ask me every day if there is something they can do. what we can all do is not allow this to happen again. there wouldn't be a better way to honor meadow and the other 60 people killed that day. i appreciate everybody being here. important aspect of secondary prevention is the mental-health measures we have all been talking about today, the social work, mental health, and primary prevention with gun control measures. i appreciate everybody having me here. [applause] >> thank you, julie. i want to say too quick things. i want to underscore what david highlighted, that everybody has different ways to mourn, and we need to respect the diverse any of that mourning.

i also went to say, this has been fabulous. we are going to put this entire discussion on our website at the national prevention science coalition. it will be up in about two weeks. material, evenf for somebody who is familiar with our literature. i want to commend the speakers. it's incredibly hard with our vast knowledge to say something cogent and moving and true in 12 minutes. so i want to thank you all for doing that. now i would like to introduce dorothy. morehy has published scientific articles in the area of school bullying and harassment than any other scholar. every time i look at the dorothy is one of

the co-authors more frequently than not. she is compared to joyce carol insightriting with deep and wisdom. i will turn it over to dorothy to make comments about what she heard, and where we go from here. dorothy: i'm an emotional person. typical academic who shuts down and says here is what the data say. i appreciate your comments and i appreciate your recommendations. you are brave to make those recommendations when so many academics sitting up here were not brave decades ago, to put ourselves out there to make some measures. i like that you started with science, which humanity, because my students hear from the university of florida, that's what they do. i'm going to try to hold myself together here.

there is parents out here there is, administrators listening, there is teachers listening. many of these recommendations are grounded in research. there's a big divide between what you heard about today and what is happening in our schools. i only have time for a few examples. what comes to mind his mental health. mental health and social emotional learning are words that are not allowed to be spoken in some of our states. i was in texas a month ago, and i was told -- i'm probably going to get in trouble and might not --e a job anymore for this working on health education standards that are 20 years old, not to mention social emotional learning. so as much as we want to say social emotional learning in our communities and in the academics, we are not allowed to use that word. , also want people to recognize parents and teachers and administrators, 70% of our

counselors and schools are trained to do mental-health work. most of them are not doing it. are scheduling computer labs. their scheduling testing. two weeks ago when i sat with a focus group of high school students in our bond, illinois, urbana, illinois, they said i can't get an appointment with our counselor because she is scheduling testing. how about having them doing mental health, instead of clerical work? actually, this is a crisis of education. [applause] a barrier to all of this is implementation. we live in the schools. we are not just sitting in a computer looking at data and crunching numbers. why can't principals find time for social emotional learning?

why is it the teachers feel restorative practices and problem-solving that would inequities in disciplinary methods, why is it that we are letting somebody off the hook? we sit in aat when restorative circle that we get pushback from adults, that it takes too much time into my training, when research is starting to show that when you take a restorative approach to discipline, people feel safer. they stay in school. they feel connected. going to that when we every school and have teachers and administrators and counselors have names put on post-its, kids names put on -- wets, and we ask kids ask of them, put the names of kids on post-its that you know and have a significant relationship with. 20% to 25% of the kids are not named. i hear this data and i live in that world of data, and i have fundersis work for the and we have to published so much

with my students to fight against the nonscientific base that is out there in our schools. there is plenty being implemented but it is not rooted in science and until we disseminate this and publish it on the large scale. i want to end it on a positive note, as much as we can be positive when we think about the way in which we are failing our children and our schools and our communities, we have been funded nicely by the national institutes of justice for the last two and a half years. we have been in the trenches with high school students. we have been talking to them. high school students to years to, when we were trying develop a reporting app, we wanted to talk to kids. kids know about kids that have mental health issues in school. bringing who is weapons to school. they know who is talking about it. to watch them on social media. what is the breakdown? why are these high school students not telling adults or the parents? what did they say two years ago?

they said i don't want to be a snitch. you cannot talk about this reporting without this idea of a snitch culture. two weeks ago, those same kids we talked to two years ago said they would use the reporting app that they developed, in this situation. there is also great pushback in the schools that if we create a mechanism such that kids can communicate if we have trust between teachers and students, if we do create this, what is going to happen if we identify mental health issues and don't have resources for them? we hear this. we have something the kids have designed and the kids say we want to report emotional and physical safety issues and i want to get resources for my friends who have challenges or mental health issues. and i hear from superintendents and principals, what happens if we identified that 25% of our kids are isolated and have made suicide attempts? i said, then we take care of them. it is part of the adult

attitudes that have led to the never again movement, and,, and all the great people in florida, and all the black lives matter, where i lived and worked in chicago public schools where these conversations were daily conversations. but those kids had to get up and walk to that school and know they might lose a family member, they might hear gunfire on a regular basis. i can't wait to march with my students tomorrow. they are the next generation. we have failed. we have failed. and i just promise you that we will do what we can, but we have a lot of work to do. if you are a teacher or you are a principal and you are always using the word but, rethink it and use the word and. thank you. [applause] >> i want to give ron a moment

to make a comment. if there is one thing you could talk to your legislator horse about -- your legislators that we are challenged in our teacher education programs, in our superintendent programs and in our principal programs, to teach any of the things you have heard over here in a systematic way the state level. oureed to challenge universities and provide funding so that every teacher, principal, superintendent program has the social know-how that is important, that is core, but also the research find it. but also the research behind it. is that we hear here there is not enough funding as well.

here,ome people mentioned if there is not funding built into the district system that is ongoing, not just a grant, i mean ongoing for supports, then this stuff is experimented on, we have evidence-based programs, and it disappears. those are two big areas that would like to urge the crowd come as you think about universities and funding these systems long-term so they are sustainable. thank you. [applause] we are going to have to wrap up. everybody is invited to the reception. i am sorry we did not have time for questions. i also want to say that both ron and david we know much of this has been hard to hear, but if you want to go down to the room to the reception, they would gladct is -- they would be

to talk with you. i think that is important. and again, thank you all for coming. we look forward to seeing you all tomorrow on the march. take care. thank you. [laughter] -- [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017]

>> richard blumenthal talks about gun violence prevention. this is at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span tomorrow. and while of the activists and politicians speaking out about gun violence. you can see that starting at saturday, noon eastern on c-span. on 8 p.m. eastern,

ben steele chronicles the efforts to rebuild western europe following world war ii. the marshall " plan" eastern, the smithsonian donation ceremony, with donated artifacts. at 10:00 p.m. on real america, the surprise oval office speech by president lyndon b. johnson announcing he would not seek reelection. that is followed by a nixon for president campaign film. eastern, joshua the -- on lyndon

johnson's great society legislation. sarah mcbride discusses her life as a transgender person and rights.i -- 12:55 p.m. eastern, remembering the life and legacy of -- william f buckley junior. 8:00, the presidency between george washington and the native americans's examination by author tom callaway. a,sunday on c-span's q and but university law professor --

a university law professor amy chua talks about tribes. to talk to ourselves as americans again and say, oh you are the evil ones. it used to be the people on the other side of the political divide were people we disagree with. now it feels like the people who voted for the other candidates are in, enemies, not real americans. because i studied democracies -- what is thed, difference between libya and the united states? they are a multiethnic country as well. they are a failed state because they don't have the overarching, strong libyan identity, strong enough to hold the country together. but we do. this is what makes us special. >> q and a, sunday night at 8:00

eastern on c-span. >> government funding was set to expire tonight at midnight. earlier today, the white house, president trump signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill that congress sent to the house this morning after the house passed it. the presidents cited that he is unhappy with the bill, including the costs, and won't sign one like it in the future. pence,oined by mike wilbur ross, james nielsen. this is 20 minutes. pres. trump: thank you very much, everybody. we have good news to report. various trade deals are being made with different countries.