Shortly after the Robb Elementary School massacre in Texas, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) used his position as Senate Majority Leader to block a school safety bill, Fox News reports. The bill, called the Luke and Alex School Safety Act of 2021, is named after two students killed in the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting of 2018 in South Florida.
Luke Hoyer and Alex Schachter were two high schoolers and residents of Parkland, a Flori da suburb outside the Miami metro area. Along with 15 other students, the two boys were killed by a 19-year-old gunman who had previously attended the school.
The bill “requires the Department of Homeland Security to establish a Federal Clearinghouse on School Safety Best Practices for use by state and local educational and law-enforcement agencies, institutions of higher education, health professionals, and the public… In addition, DHS must coordinate with the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice to assess and identify best practices and recommendations and establish an advisory board to provide feedback and propose additional recommendations.”
The U.S. government has a website in place — SchoolSafety.gov — which was “created to provide schools and districts with actionable recommendations to create a safe and supportive learning environment where students can thrive and grow.”
The Luke and Alex School Safety Act of 2021 identifies the SchoolSafety.gov website or a successor website as the primary resource of the federal government to publish School Safety Best Practices information. If the bill is passed and signed by the President, it would codify the measure into law.
The SchoolSafety.gov site currently offers information on bullying and cyberbullying, emergency planning, mental health, infectious disease and public health, targeted violence, and other topics.
School districts around the country are free to practice the recommendations on the website, and many have already done so. However, there is nothing in the bill that requires school districts to implement the suggestions.
“GOP Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) just tried for a bill that could see more guns in schools—I blocked it,” Schumer tweeted on Wednesday, May 25. “The truth: There were officers at the school in Texas. The shooter got past them. We need real solutions—We will vote on gun legislation starting with the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act.”
Senator Schumer has been strongly criticized for blocking the school safety bill.
Max Schachter, the father of Alex Schacter, accused Schumer of holding the bill “hostage” to use it as “leverage” on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act.
He also disagreed that the bill would result in more guns within schools.
“How does a website put guns in schools? It’s ridiculous. It has nothing to do with guns,” Schacter told Fox News.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella group of American civil rights interest groups, opposes the Luke and Alex School Safety Act.
“The Luke and Alex School Safety Act furthers a misguided view of school safety by giving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authority to infuse itself into school safety efforts. DHS — an agency charged with focusing on counterterrorism and border security — is not the appropriate institution to lead school safety efforts,” the group stated on its website.
The Luke and Alex Act is not dead. Senator Schumer has already explained that the bill could eventually be passed.
Nonetheless, Schumer could try to use the bill, which Republican lawmakers drafted, as a bargaining chip to pass gun control legislation.
Schumer’s decision fits into a plan to propel a vote on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House after the shooting at a Buffalo grocery store on May 14 that left 10 dead. The bill contains various gun control provisions rejected by members of the National Rifle Association (NRA).