Aug. 17 (UPI) — Students should be trained to treat injured victims in case of a school attack, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday during a Trump administration school-safety meeting.
The Federal Commission on School Safety, which convened for the fifth time since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February, was chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Members of the administration discussed methods to increase school safety and improve responses to future attacks, including a “focus on best practices for school building security, active shooter training for schools, and practitioner experience with school-based threat assessment,” according tothe Department of Homeland Security.
“We’re also working to mitigate the potential consequences of a successful attack,” Nielsen said at the meeting. “We recently established a $1.8 million grant to enable schools and other groups to train high school students with the skills necessary to stabilize the injured and control severe bleeding.”
John Verrico, a spokesman for the DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate, told ABC News the School-Age Trauma Training will teach high school students basic first aid for use in “any sort of disaster.”
During the meeting, Max Schachter, the father of one of the Parkland victims, urged the commission to appoint a school safety czar.
“This commission is doing good work bringing together all these subject matter experts and best practices,” Schachter said, according to the New York Post. “But after Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after Sandy Hook, they also had a commission. Those commissions made recommendations. My question to you is: Who is going to be responsible for following through after this commission ends?”
