After the deadly mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14th, the Boston Public Schools Superintendent, Tommy Chang, spoke out to share his thoughts about how to prevent mass shoutings in schools, and to critize President Donald Trump’s idea of arming teachers inside the schools.
On a brief statement shared to the press, Chang considers that “when it comes to school safety” our focus should be on “violence prevention and creating a culture of inclusion in all of our schools,” instead of arming teachers, something that will “only resulting in making our students and teachers less safe.”
Please see following Mr. Chang’s entire statement:
The mere thought that teachers should be armed in order to ward off violence is utterly illogical and will only result in making our students and teachers less safe.
The real issue at hand continues to be access to guns. In Boston, we have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. We have a Mayor and a Police Commissioner who are fighting federal proposals that threaten to move us backward, such as the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. Just last year, we hosted the New England Regional Gun Summit right here at the Bolling Building to work with our neighboring cities and states on preventing the illegal flow of firearms into our city.
When it comes to school safety, we know that our focus should be on violence prevention and creating a culture of inclusion in all of our schools. We are providing regular training that’s rooted in best practices to ensure the safety of our students if a situation were to occur, not wasting our time training educators how to carry and use a firearm. Our priority in Boston will always be the well-being of our school communities, and bringing guns into schools is simply not the answer.
