COLUMBUS – On a day that will see hearings and committee votes on a number of gun-related bills, an Ohio House committee kicked off the morning by approving a $10 million school safety grant program.
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The grant program, which schools can use for a variety of safety measures, was added to a bill defining the qualifications, training requirements and responsibilities of school resource officers, including 40 hours of specialized training.
“I can’t change the past, but we can, through this legislation make sure it is more difficult for these types of events to happen,” Frank Hall told the committee, reliving the terrifying shooting at Chardon High School on Feb. 27, 2012, when a student opened fire on students in the cafeteria, shooting six, three of whom were killed and one was left paralyzed.
Hall, a football coach and study hall monitor, was credited with saving lives. He charged at the shooter, who fired at him, and chased the youth from the building and into nearby woods.
Hall said he wants his life back to the way it was before the shooting, and urged lawmakers to pass standards for school resource officers: “Putting a school resource officer who is a police officer who has special training is the most important step in securing our buildings and protecting our children.”
He and the community established the Coach Hall Foundation, which seeks to help communities find ways to protect school children. Tim Armelli, a veteran Chardon teacher and president of the foundation, stressed the value of resource offices both for security and as positive role models and student mentors.
“He’s become the fiber of our school climate from the inside,” Armelli said of Chardon’s resource officer.
The father of a girl killed in the Parkland, Florida, school massacre joined Gov. John Kasich in supporting the bipartisan changes.
Fred Guttenberg appeared briefly with Kasich on Tuesday and called Ohio’s proposals common sense and not an attempt to take away anyone’s rights.
Guttenberg’s daughter Jaime was among 17 people killed in the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
The Ohio proposal pushed by Kasich includes a so-called “red flag” law. That concept enables family members, guardians or police to ask judges to use a new gun violence restraining order to temporarily strip gun rights from people who show warning signs of violence.