Florida and Iowa senators lead the latest push for stronger school safety measures
Florida – Reintroducing the EAGLES Act, U.S. Senators from Florida and Iowa along with a bipartisan group of legislators are making a major step to improve school safety. Expanding the scope of the National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC), a division of the U.S. Secret Service, the initiative aims to stop acts of violence in classrooms. This legislation comes on the seventh anniversary of the Parkland, Florida school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after which the bill is named.
The EAGLES Act calls for a national initiative meant to stop school violence. It seeks to increase NTAC’s research, training, and information sharing initiatives in order to equip educational environments to spot and minimize risks before they turn into violence. The law mandates cooperation among the Departments of Justice and Education to improve threat assessments and early intervention plans as well as more interaction between the Secret Service and local school safety partners.
Leading this movement are Florida Senator Rick Scott and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley; other senators joining the effort are Catherine Cortez Masto, Angus King, Susan Collins, Maggie Hassan, and Pete Ricketts. Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Jared Moskowitz have brought companion legislation into the House of Representatives.
“In the seven years since the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that took the lives of 17 beautiful souls, I’ve made it my goal to enact change that will honor their memory and keep our schools safe. Our bipartisan EAGLES Act to provide our schools with additional tools to address potential threats and prevent further tragedies, a huge step in keeping our students and educators safe. I urge my colleagues to support its passage into law,” Senator Rick Scott said.
“Effective behavioral threat assessments and early interventions can stop deadly ideas from becoming tragic acts. Our bill would enable the Secret Service to share their unique tools and expertise with school safety partners across the country, building safer communities. While we cannot undo past tragedies, we can work together to honor the memories of those we’ve lost and prevent future violence,” Senator Grassley rsaid.
Senator Angus King said, “Too many communities in Maine and all across the country have been devastated by mass acts of violence. Whether it’s at school, the supermarket, or church, Americans deserve to feel safe while going about their daily lives. The bipartisan EAGLES Act would expand the capabilities of the National Threat Assessment Center so we can better prevent mass violence and senseless tragedies. This is a proactive, commonsense step forward in combatting public threats and I thank my colleagues for coming together to help keep our communities safe.”
From its founding in 1998, the NTAC has been instrumental in creating evidence-based indicators for targeted violence, including school shootings. For about 198,000 school administrators, teachers, counselors, and law enforcement officials, it has run hundreds of training courses. The EAGLES Act not only reauthorizes NTAC but also increases its financing to improve these training initiatives and organize a nationwide targeted school violence prevention program.
To guarantee openness and responsibility in the government’s attempts to raise school safety, the legislation also requires regular progress reports from the Secret Service to Congress. Strong support for the bill has come from many different groups committed to school safety, including Make Our Schools Safe, the School-Based Health Alliance, and the National Association of School Resource Officers, among others, so confirming to the pressing need for strengthening school safety policies.
