Constituents discuss school safety at VanValkenburg meeting

The scene June 14 looked like it could have taken place in Schuyler VanValkenburg's history classroom at Glen Allen High School.

Pieces of poster paper hung in pairs on the walls. Ideas had been scrawled on them in market unevenly. Group leaders waited to be called on to share their ideas.

But this wasn’t a classroom. The groups weren’t composed of students, but rather of about 30 concerned parents, teachers and community members. And the group activity wasn’t about history – it was about how state government should make schools safer.

VanValkenburg, who in addition to teaching represents Virginia's 72nd District in the House of Delegates, hosted the meeting at Libbie Mill Library to seek input from citizens about school safety initiatives. He is one of 21 delegates appointed in March to a committee about school safety created by House Speaker Kirk Cox.

Since his appointment, VanValkenburg has been hosting public town halls with his constituents in an effort to find out what proposals they would like to see drafted into potential legislation. Instead of hosting a traditional town hall question-and-answer session, VanValkenburg tried a different approach. He invited two other government members involved with school safety to the meeting, and the three of them explained their role in promoting school safety in the state.

Capt. Mark Banks, the commanding officer of the Henrico County school services unit who oversees the school resources officers in the county, told attendees that the issue is a huge one.

“This is a never ending battle,” Banks told the audience. “To say we can’t do more is an understatement.”

Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor, part of the original working groups organized by Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2012 after the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, agreed.

“This is not the first time talking about this issue,” Taylor said. “Each incident all has a constant common denominator that isn’t being properly addressed.”

After his two guests spoke, VanValkenburg asked constituents to break into small groups to discuss what proposals they wanted him to consider and to put those ideas on poster paper.

The idea was partially inspired by his experience as a schoolteacher, VanValkenburg explained. He hoped that conducting a group exercise would result in more responses than a question-and-answer session would.

“It’s the best of both worlds,” VanValkenburg said. “There’s discussion elements mixed with government officials relevant to the issue that constituents can approach freely and talk to.”

Some constituents suggested more state funding for support services for at-risk students, which could be used to hire more school psychologists, nurses and school resource officers. Others wrote that they supported improvements in physical security to make it harder for potential shooters to get into a building.

One group included the idea of banning assault weapons. However, while VanValkenburg did say that attendees could discuss gun control, the committee itself is not allowed to include any form of gun-related language in its policy proposals to the House of Delegates, per Cox's rules when he created the committee.

VanValkenburg concluded the exercise by asking constituents to put stars next to favorite three proposal ideas, so that he could tally up the top three and discuss them at the next committee meeting this summer.

Fairfield District resident Cathy Woodson, 65, attended the meeting to hear how others were thinking about school safety and to get ideas of different types of conversations. One of the ideas Woodson particularly liked was about increasing support staff.

“A lot of students and a lot of families don’t know how to ask for help,” said Woodson, who has family members attending Henrico public schools. “We need to give more attention to the kids.”

Not many students were present at the meeting, despite their voices being heard on the national stage as groups engage in protests, walk-outs and social media campaigns. VanValkenburg hopes that students will continue to keep their voices loud, and he'd also like to find ways to encourage students to participate in the political process in more traditional means – such as voting and showing up to political meetings, he said.

VanValkenburg felt the dialogue from attendees would help contribute to the process of affecting change, he said.

Taylor, however, believed that the dialogue that occurred in 2012 was nearly the same as the dialogue happening now and at this rate, not much would get better. She was optimistic about the ideas constituents came up with, though.

“The changes that need to happen are extreme and expensive,” Taylor said. “But the impact of those changes could be lifelong. We need to offer more mental health services. We need to figure out how to give parents support and how to limit student access to guns.”

The school safety committee will host a public meeting July 11 at Meadowbrook High School at 10:30 a.m. to discuss its various proposal ideas.