Exactly six months after its inception, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's School and Campus Safety Task Force met to submit its final recommendations Thursday.
The task force is made up of politicians, members of law enforcement, teachers and students from across the Commonwealth.
Alexa Rennie of Chesterfield County, Va., is the only high school student in the group. She came with her own concerns, telling News4's David Culver, "I saw a big gap in the schools. If you have one lockdown drill a year, you could have it the last day of school and still technically be within the law."
To correct that, the task force proposed a law requiring lockdown drills every year. They'd have to happen before Feb. 1 of each school year.
For the past 32 years, Meg Gruber has taught high school in Prince William County. As part of this task force, she saw a bigger safety concern in open campuses such as community colleges and universities.
To close the perceived gap, the task force recommended Critical Incident Response training. "And that is having people on campus who volunteer to be ready to be a rapid response, and are waiting for the first responders to get there," Gruber explained.
The training would be available to teachers, staff and students should they choose to take part.
Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman, also on the task force, supported the push to make potential threats easier to report without people fearing civil lawsuits or retribution.
Sheriff Chapman said it's important "to get that kind of intervention early on, so you don't have a Sandy Hook situation or another situation like that. These are the kind of things we're trying to do on the prevention side."
In all, more than 30 recommendations went to the governor. It'll ultimately be up to the General Assembly to vote them into laws.
State Sen. George Barker of northern Virginia is confident they'll be passed and paid for. He said, "The budget impact is not insurmountable. So it's a very manageable type of thing, and I think we will be able to get all of these funded and implemented next year."
The task force also pushed for incentives to create more school resource officer positions. Additionally they want those officers to be better trained, specifically when it comes to identifying mental health issues.
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