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Virginia School Safety Task Force

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Virginia School Safety Panel Will Be ‘Reasonable, Not Reactionary’

Group charged with evaluating school safety says it'll focus on experts and fact, not emotion.

By Whitney Spicer, Capital News Service Members of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s School and Campus Safety Task Force vowed Monday their recommendations on keeping Virginia’s schools safe would be based on fact and not emotion. The task force – charged with evaluating the safety of schools and campuses throughout the state – was assembled by McDonnell in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting last month in Newtown, Conn. “I thought in the wake of that terrible tragedy, it would be prudent to get all of our leading experts from all disciplines together to gather around a table or two, and talk about what can we do better,” McDonnell said. After a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary, some …

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Fairfax Teachers Union Launches Safety Survey

In light of Sandy Hook shootings and ahead of Virginia General Assembly kickoff this week, union turns to members to get opinion on guns in schools and what safe schools should look like.

In the weeks since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., politicians and advocacy groups have issued recommendations for how schools can try to prevent the tragedy — which killed 26 students and school employees — from happening again. A voice so far largely absent from those discussions in Fairfax and Northern Virginia: teachers. One of Fairfax County's largest teachers unions is hoping to change that, launching Tuesday a security and schools survey asking its 4,265 members about the use of guns in schools, where the system could use extra security personnel, how safe schools are now and how to make them safer, among other topics. "What I see more and more of is politicians posturing up and taking positions …

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