While people on the far left and far right of the political spectrum argue about gun reform, most agree that children have the right to be safe in school.
“I always felt that as adults, it’s our responsibility and our duty to make sure that our kids go to schools in a safe environment,” said Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. She said that before the shooting, she was a full-fledged soccer mom. “We lived in this bubble over here in Parkland. We call it the Parkland bubble.” She and many of her fellow moms mostly focused on their children, and whatever activities those kids were into as stay-at-home mothers. “You know, pack my kids’ lunch, put my tennis uniform on,” she said, noting that she was on a tennis team. “I’d go in and play tennis. Go to the grocery story, buy dinner for my family, come home cook dinner, clean the house, do laundry. And then my kids were coming home from school.” All that changed the day Alyssa did not make it home. Lori and her family became members in “this club that nobody every wanted to be in,” said Alhadeff. “I was in my own bubble, my own world… until my daughter was shot 10 times with an AR-15,” she said in tears. “That really opened my eyes to, you know, that it’s gotta stop. And by doing nothing and doing the same thing over and over is, you know, they say is the definition of insanity.” Instead of doing nothing, Alhadeff does a lot. She ran for school board on the platform of school safety, and won a seat. She considers herself a strong advocate for school safety on the Broward County Public School Board. “We have school shooting after school shooting after school shooting, and then these commissions come and they come out with these recommendations,” said Alhadeff, who has a masters degree in education. “I mean after Columbine, Sandy Hook, they all came out with these recommendations.” But recommendations are one thing; actions backed by real money are another. She said school boards often look at recommendations, and select a few of them, as if from a menu. “We can’t forget about the rest. So it’s my job to keep that in the forefront,” she said. “This came up in the last meeting because they were allocating funds for different initiatives, and school safety had zeros next to all of them.” Alhadeff questioned the superintendent and fellow board members, pointing out that they had a report with specific recommendations for the 200-plus schools in the district. She asked how they could follow through on those recommendations without assigning dollars to them. “It’s going to take money,” she said, “to accomplish those safety measures.” Alhadeff has also pushed for Alyssa’s Law, which requires that every school have a panic button to alert law enforcement of a threat at the school. It was recently enacted into law in New Jersey. She hopes to see the same in Florida. But this year, Florida legislators attached it to a bill to arm teachers, which Alhadeff is opposed to. “I can’t ask people to support something that supports arming teachers,” she said, hoping that next year Alyssa’s Law can stand alone and pass into law in Florida. Like all families who mourn their murdered children, Alhadeff’s life has changed drastically since Alyssa’s death. “Before I was just a stay-at-home mom” with a paper calendar, she said. “And so now I have two phones. I’m running a nonprofit organization. I have a secretary for the school board.” She has two Twitter and two Instagram accounts, and recently did an interview on The Today Show. “Plus I’m a mother of two boys, and a wife. So I wear a lot of hats.” The nonprofit she and her husband Ilan Alhadeff founded is Make Our Schools Safe, a nonpolitical organization that commits itself to improving the safety of schools and research on school safety. It stays away from gun-reform debates, however. “We don’t focus on the gun issue because it becomes too polarizing. People go to the right, people are left, and then they forget about making schools safe,” said Alhadeff, who says that her activism helps her healing. “Our children are required to go to school. So we (adults) need to be required to make sure that their school is safe.” She came up with the framework for the nonprofit soon after her daughter was killed. “Right after the tragedy, like my brain was on speed. Like, just going crazy,” she recalled. “I couldn’t sleep for weeks upon weeks. And I came up with this idea.” The organization also creates Dream Team clubs at schools, in which students become safety activists, each meeting the needs of their particular school. Currently they exist in Florida, New York, New Jersey, and at American University in Washington, D.C. The day after the shooting, Alhadeff gained notoriety after yelling into a live CNN camera, appealing to the president to take action to protect children. Later she said that, enveloped in grief, she had no idea what she was going to say. But when a reporter handed her a microphone, she found her words. “President Trump, you say, What can you do? You can stop the guns from getting into these children’s hands,” she screamed, tears streaming down her face. “What can you do? You can do a lot. This is not fair to our families and our children to go [to] school and have to get killed!” Alhadeff said the shooting has made the family closer, but at what cost. “I don’t think anybody has a recipe for when something so tragically happens to their sister that they, you know, know how you can respond appropriately. They have channeled their energies into their soccer,” she said of her two sons. Alyssa was also a devoted soccer player. As her family moves through the waves of grief, Alhadeff remains focused on protecting students from future shootings. “The bullets don’t discriminate,” she said softly. “The problem that we have in our country with guns is going to continue to be an issue until we unite as a country to demand change. And that we all take two steps to the middle to figure out what that change looks like, and compromise.” She cannot comprehend why this has not yet happened. “We hardened our airports,” she said of the now familiar safety checks. “And after every school shooting, ‘Thoughts and Prayers.’ But that’s not protecting our kids. Our children are continuing to die in our schools from gun violence. And we need to wake up.”
2 Comments
1/7/2020 03:40:31 am
Glad to see this woman is doing hard work for the safety of schools after the murder of here innocent daughter. She is a brave woman and didn't loose heart after the death of her daughter so we should enhance her confidence.
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3/17/2023 08:29:40 am
I have no idea about this woman pain. I am sending all my prayers, life so tragically. I think this is very good idea about school safety. I hope she will find a way to take away a pain.
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AuthorMary Tolan is a fiction writer and journalist. Her first published book Mars Hill Murder, a mystery set in Flagstaff, will be published by The Wild Rose Press in autumn of 2023. Archives
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