South Florida lawmaker refiles bill to require teacher training against school shootings

Coral Springs Rep. Dan Daley is again trying to update Florida’s teacher standards to require that educators receive basic, uniform training on how to prevent and respond to school shootings.

Daley filed a bill (HB 37) to mandate that “strategies and practices on identifying, preventing, preparing, addressing and responding to mass casualty incidents” is included in all teacher and education preparation, certification and training programs.

It’s identical to legislation he and Miami Gardens Sen. Shevrin Jones, a fellow Democrat, carried during the 2024 Legislative Session. Daley’s version of the bill died at its last committee stop. Jones’ version never got a hearing.

An effort to get the bill’s provisions included a larger school safety package sponsored by Miami Republican Sen. Alexis Calatayud, Democratic Rep. Christine Hunschofsky of Parkland and Republican Rep. Dana Trabulsy of Fort Pierce was also unsuccessful.

Daley, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School alum, said his proposal is too important and actionable to abandon.

“While we have made great strides in school safety through a lot of the work we’ve done post-Parkland, there’s always more to do, and I think the Legislature should always be passing school safety provisions because the threat is always evolving,” he told Florida Politics.

Daley already has a curriculum from which the state can borrow: FERTES (Future Educators Response to Emergency Situations), an academic program at Indian River State College designed to prepare teachers for worst-case scenarios.

Among other things, program enrollees learn how to barricade doors against intruders, administer first aid, organize classroom layouts and watch for warning signs to prevent and mitigate the impact of a shooting.

As Daley envisions it, the program, or one like it that the state develops, would be required for new teachers and existing teachers seeking to renew their certification. He said he knows teachers already go through a lot of training and that his measure ran into “a little bit of pushback” last Session from people who opposed adding to pile.

“I get that,” he said. “But the most important job of government is to keep our kids safe, so this is a priority. It’s a step in the right direction.”

By late last month, there were at least 78 school shootings in the United States this year, according to a CNN analysis of events reported by the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week and Everytown for Gun Safety.

In 2023, there were 82 school shooting incidents. The year before was among the deadliest on record, with 46 fatalities including 19 students and two educators who were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Florida has seen at least 32 school shootings since 2008, or approximately 0.15 incidents per 100,000 people.

This year, six people have been killed and 10 were injured by gunfire in three planned school shootings, according to a tracker NBC News launched in 2019 to provide up-to-date statistics on incidents since 2013.

Lawmakers in March unanimously approved the school safety package by Calatayud, Hunschofsky and Trabulsy that, among other things, required de-escalation training, implemented new reporting requirements and established new perimeter and door safety restrictions to better safeguard students and school staff.