The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission was established just weeks after the Parkland shooting in 2018. It was tasked with finding what went wrong and how to prevent future school shootings.
Then-Governor Rick Scott and leaders of the Florida legislature appointed the commission members: law enforcement officers, educators, state lawmakers and parents of kids who died.
Max Schachter was one of them — his son Alex died in the shooting. Five years later, he said the process has been both painful and rewarding.
"It's been hard, you know, because every meeting I had to relive Alex being murdered all over again. It's been frustrating because of the ineptitude and the failures in Broward County," Max told WLRN in the run-up to this week's anniversary.
"And it's been positive in that we've seen some positive change come out of this horrible tragedy, all in Alex's name and in the other 16 victims."
Ryan Petty was the other parent appointed to the commission. His daughter, Alaina, was murdered at the high school.
"Nothing we do will bring back our loved ones," he told WLRN last year. "This is a work of passion. This is a work of hope that what we had to experience won't happen to any other families."
In the days leading up to the five-year anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, WLRN's Gerard Albert III also spoke with Petty about his work on the commission.
Below is an excerpt from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Albert: I can't imagine what was going through your mind after the shooting. How did it come to be that Gov. Scott appointed you to the commission?
PETTY: He told me he didn't ever want this to happen again in Florida. And I couldn't think of a better way to honor my daughter. I was still reeling from the loss. I still am reeling from the loss. But the opportunity to honor her and the person that she was, and was becoming, was something I knew I needed to be a part of.
This was something that was new to you. So I'm wondering what your thoughts were going in.
Initially, I was doubtful as to the impact the commission could have because I'd seen so many of these types of tragedies around the country where a commission is impaneled, some hearings are held and nothing is really done. And I couldn't have been more wrong.
The commission has done so much in the effort to improve school safety in Florida, including pushing for statewide behavioral threat assessment standards. What can you tell me about how these threat assessments work?
The goal of these behavioral threat assessment and management teams is not to try to get a kid into the juvenile justice system. The goal is to understand what's going on, to assess the threat, understand what's going on in the life or lives of those that are making these threats, and then get them an intervention, get them help that they need to resolve these things. And what we've learned as a commission is that these things are hard to implement. They're challenging because you've got three different entities at a minimum that have to communicate and work together and collaborate to keep our schools safe.
Looking ahead, what's the next thing the commission is going to focus on?
Well, the threats continue to evolve. The challenge is changing the way our school districts, law enforcement and mental health professionals communicate about troubled or potentially troubled kids. They may be crying out for help, let's say, or maybe looking to attack a school and getting those entities to communicate better.
