Trump admin guts school safety committee created to combat mass shootings

Senior Trump official tells The 74 Dept. of Homeland Security will “no longer tolerate” any committees that “undermine its national security mission.”

This story originally appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. 

When a broad group of parents, educators and activists met in late October at a government office building in Arlington, Virginia, they gathered around a shared goal: Make America’s schools safer.

There, three parents whose children were killed in mass school shootings sought to bolster student mental health and crisis intervention services. Some advocates favored increased school policing and physical security while others sought to limit how those hardening measures can harm children’s civil rights. Each was there as a check on recommendations being made by the federal government.

But membership on the 26-person committee, which was created through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 — passed in the wake of mass shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket — was short-lived. On Monday, the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, all members were terminated. For members of the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse External Advisory Board, the October gathering was the group’s first time meeting — and also its last.

A letter signed by Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman and obtained by The 74 said:

The decision was part of a wider effort to ensure the agency’s “activities prioritize our national security.”

“Future committee activities will be focused on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities,” Huffman wrote in the letter. “To outgoing advisory board members, you are welcome to reapply, thank you for your service.”

In fact, DHS fired all members of its various committees this week to eliminate what it deemed as “the misuse of resources,” including those focused on emergency preparedness and cybersecurity. The move comes as schools and education technology providers nationwide face an onslaught of cyberattacks.

Among the people who advocated for the committee’s creation — and was ultimately dismissed from it this week — is airline pilot Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina was killed in 2018 during the mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Montalto is now president of the nonprofit Stand With Parkland, which was created by the parents of the Florida shooting to advance bipartisan campus security efforts.

In an interview with The 74 on Wednesday, Montalto said he is “disappointed that the members have been dismissed,” and hopes to serve again on the board, which is congressionally mandated.

“Too often the government gets involved in ‘government speak’, and we wanted to bring this external advisory board to life so that real people from outside of government could come together and have input into the process of keeping students and teachers safe at school,” Montalto said. He said the board members, which were appointed during the Biden administration, represented a “broad cross-section” of experts and opinions with a shared interest in student and teacher safety.

School shootings in the U.S. have surged to record highs in the last several years, including an attack at a Tennessee high school Wednesday that led to the deaths of two students, including the alleged gunman. The video streaming platform Kick acknowledged Wednesday evening the shooter had livestreamed part of the attack.

“There was really an effort to get as many perspectives as possible into the room, and I don’t think there was any preconceived notion on where we were going,” Marlow said. “We were not given any instructions, like ‘We would like to see you do X.’”

During the day-long session, he said, committee members were divided into three groups to discuss improvements to federal school safety grants and to analyze various security interventions like school-based policing.

The shakeup could eliminate experts whose viewpoints don’t align with those of the Trump administration.

Marlow said it’s possible that the Trump administration could appoint new board members who are not in lockstep but fears the shakeup could eliminate experts whose viewpoints don’t align with those of the Trump administration and “handcuff the quality” of the group’s work.

“I hope it’s not the latter because, at the end of the day, we should be focused on doing the best for keeping our kids safe — or, in the language they’re using, protecting the homeland,” Marlow said.

[Related: School interventions offer best shot at reducing youth violence]

Still, Marlow said he plans to reapply for his seat. So, too, does Montalto, who said the Clearinghouse first created by Trump is “actually one of the most efficient programs in the government” with four agencies coming together to provide resources designed to keep students safe.

Important, too, are the voices of parents who’ve experienced tragedy firsthand.

“Anybody who has suffered that loss can drive home the point of how important school safety is,” Montalto said. “It’s a nonpartisan issue, we just need to come together as an American family and try to make a difference.”

***

Mark Keierleber is a New York-based investigative reporter at The 74. Mark writes about education, juvenile justice, criminal justice, civil rights, immigration, surveillance, security and technology. Keierleber’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Fast Company, The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Boston Globe, among other publications.

The 74 is a nonprofit news organization covering America’s education system from early childhood through college and career. The 74 is dedicated to examining the issues impacting the education of America’s 74 million children — and the effectiveness of the system that delivers it. The 74 centers their reporting on the teachers, innovators, researchers, school leaders and politicians who shape that education, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Their mission is to lead an honest, fact-based conversation about how to give American students the skills, support and social mobility they deserve. Backed by data, investigation, and expertise. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74.