PUBLISHER'S NOTEBOOK: 17 minutes of our attention

Attention high school students: You have our attention, but our attention span is short. You only have it until the next big story hits.

After the school shooting in Parkland Florida, high school students have moved to the front of the nation’s conscience. At rallies and roundtables, including a meeting with President Trump, students and parents of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s voices have been heard. Yet we remain crippled with the inability to come together to protect our students. When rhetoric is expressed like comments from NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch who stated at CPAC 2018 that “many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it. Now I’m not saying you love the tragedy but I am saying that you love the ratings...” how will we ever come together and have a real national discussion?

As Andrew Pollack, father of 17-year-old Parkland victim Meadow Pollack, has repeatedly pointed out, this is not all about gun control laws. We’ll never come to an agreement on that anytime soon. It’s about defining a clear plan to protect our students.

Last week a false story spread through social media concerning a threat at Houston High School and another probably non-credible threat at Colony High School that caused the administration to err on the side of caution and cancel a planned assembly. These incidents should serve to remind us that what happened at Parkland could happen anywhere including here. We are only one credible threat away.

This past Wednesday a group of students from Palmer and Colony High School, with the administration’s blessing and guidance, held a 17-minute walkout to honor the victims in Parkland, to bring awareness that spreading kindness and compassion within their own campus can be a part of the prevention solution and also to let us adults know that they do not feel safe within the walls of their own schools. Media outlets including the Frontiersman covered these events and published their respective stories. The reaction on social media to the walkout was mixed. It ranged from full support to calling out school administration for supporting tacit truancy. Sometimes lessons that can be taught to students aren’t always found in a textbook or a planned curriculum. Sometimes these lessons are laid at the feet of educators and they have to react. I applaud the administration for teaching the students the right way to assemble and let their voices be heard.

Superintendent Monica Goyette’s official statement on school safety, that was published in the Frontiersman, outlines what the school district policy and plan is in case of a threat at the school. She addressed the fact that the school district is conducting a full review of its prevention and protection policies. The school district is also creating environments of learning on how to handle conflict, prevention of bullying and general positive interaction between staff and students and students and students. These are long-term solutions in creating the culture of inclusion and understanding and hopefully prevention.

Unfortunately, we have seen in recent history that there is inherent evil amongst us. We never know when it’s going to rear its ugly head. When the students in our district are saying that they do not feel safe at school it is time for us to take another hard look at where we are in regards to school safety. I’m confident that the school district is fully aware and is always looking at ways to improve. There has been a lot put in place in the event there is an active shooter, though I wonder if Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and its school district felt they, too had enough in place to prevent such a tragedy. We now know that even having an armed resource officer on campus — who allegedly shirked from his duties — didn’t prevent the escalation of lives lost.

Is it time to have another set of eyes on the situation? While the school district is in self-evaluation mode, maybe it’s time for the Mat-Su School Board to form a committee of citizens to look at school security.

This group of citizens could be selected from various segments of our community including active and retired law enforcement. Instead of ideas being thrown around at various town halls and social media groups we need to make sure every real solution is discussed and presented to those who are making the decisions at the school district level. Ideas from more resource officers that are sourced from local law enforcement to allowing school staff to conceal weapons and carry to metal detectors. Maybe ideas that have never been presented would rise to the top.

Alaska’s last school shooting was in Bethel in 1997 and hopefully it will remain the last. But when we have students who are communicating with us that they do not feel secure in their school — no matter how many active shooter trainings they go through — we need to listen and act.

17 minutes will soon be out of our attention spans and we will all move on to the next big story.