By Beth LeBlanc
The Detroit News
LANSING, Mich. — A bipartisan task force in the Michigan House will study safety in schools and policy solutions they hope will help prevent further violence in the wake of the Nov. 30 Oxford High School shooting.
The eight-member task force will look at practical ways to improve safety protocols at schools as well as ways to assess and improve student mental health.
The committee hopes to have recommendations within the first few months of 2022.
“Outside of Oxford, I think everyone can see just the tremendous increase in demand for school mental health help,” said Rep. Luke Meerman, R- Coopersville. “It was there before COVID, and just has been exacerbated by COVID.”
The task force is made up of four Republicans and four Democrats: Meerman; Reps. Scott VanSingel, R- Grant; Gary Eisen, R- St. Clair Township; Pamela Hornberger, R- Chesterfield Township; Kelly Breen, D- Novi; Ranjeev Puri, D- Canton Township; Sara Cambensy, D- Marquette; and Terry Sabo, D- Muskegon.
The task force was formed after the rampage at Oxford High School, where 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley is alleged to have shot 10 students and a teacher. Four students were killed: Hana St. Juliana, 14, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Tate Myre, 16, and Justin Shilling, 17.
Ethan Crumbley faces 24 charges, including four counts of first-degree murder, and his parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
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In the wake of the shooting, Democratic lawmakers floated bills banning high-capacity magazines and increasing the required safe storage of firearms by preventing access by minors. On the opposite side of the aisle, one Republican lawmaker proposed lockboxes in schools where teachers could securely store guns.
But the task force doesn’t plan to put its focus on guns, acknowledging that any legislation expanding or restricting gun access is unlikely to make it through Michigan’s divided government.
“I’m sure it will come up, but just looking at history and knowing where our personal beliefs are I’m not really optimistic we’ll come up with substantive gun legislation,” said VanSingel. “It has to be something that will pass through the Legislature.”
Two years ago, VanSingel was the sponsor of legislation that allowed schools to install door-locking devices that acted as barricades to active shooters. The devices were used during the Oxford High School shooting, and parents have thanked the Mount Morris company that makes the devices, Nightlock.
He’s hoping to find similar ways to “harden” or secure schools against attackers.
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“The goal is to actually have something we can put into legislation and begin to chip away at this problem,” VanSingel said. “We learn from each one of these experiences and we want to find out what we could have done better. Most of those solutions we can probably have bipartisan support on.”
Cambensy, a former administrator for Marquette Area Public Schools, said she believes there are root issues affecting schools that have little to do with guns. Local teachers and school administrators, Cambensy said, have indicated COVID illness and protocols continue to stress school leaders, parents and students, who are increasingly feeling isolated.
“The kids are not OK,” she said.
She wants to expand and fund more programs focused on student well-being and assess what resources, support and communication parents and administrators need to help their kids. Cambensy said she’d also like to discuss with the task force ways to expand the Michigan State Police OK2SAY program, which provides an avenue for students to report people who have made threats toward others or themselves.
“This program has been extremely successful at preventing more tragedies from happening, and I am a huge proponent of providing more funding and resources for it so that this task doesn’t fall solely on school administrators and teachers to solve,” she said.
She also stressed that the “politics of COVID” have increased tensions among parents, students and administrators, and elected leaders “need to do better.”
“How we have dealt with COVID — from the governor’s office down to the legislative offices — has not benefited the citizens,” she said. “Both sides are to blame for politicizing a virus that has caused the average family and students more unnecessary stress than they need to have over it.”
Sabo said the group is open to suggestions and is hoping to move quickly to analyze current safety shortfalls and begin recommending policy solutions. But Sabo, a former police officer, said it’s important to have stakeholders at the table during discussions.
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“Too many times we think we have the answers without talking to people who are out there working in this environment every day,” Sabo said. “Bringing in people who actually do know what they’re talking about is important.”
Before the Oxford shooting, Meerman said he had been working with school counselors and psychologists for months after a student death by suicide in his district pushed him to explore better prevention measures. The counselor assigned to the student wasn’t informed that the student, who’d recently transferred to the district, had a friend at a prior school who had recently died by suicide.
“She felt there was more that could have been done if there was more she knew,” Meerman said.
Meerman’s been discussing the issue with Nick Jaskiw, a school psychologist in the Newaygo County RESA and past president of the Michigan Association of School Psychologists.
Jaskiw said those conversations led to a summit of sorts of education, school nurse, school psychologist, health educator and school counseling associations. They’re preparing recommendations that could aid the task force in its work, he said.
The Oxford shooting, Jaskiw said, “reinforces that we’ve got to get this done and we’ve got to get this done right.”
“When you look at those situations, it’s a reminder that when you’re approaching these challenges, you can’t separate suicide prevention, school safety and student mental health,” he said. “Those pieces are critical and that’s been the focus of all the departments working with the associations.”
Separately, Attorney General Dana Nessel has said she also will be reviewing school safety protocols throughout the state, “trying to learn from this experience to find out how we can better protect students all around the state.”
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