Another School Shooting — and an $8 Million Bid to Stop Them

This is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber .

It’s once again a harrowing week in America, as the nation grapples with yet another mass school shooting — the 218th documented campus gunfire incident this year, according to a tally by the folks at the K-12 School Shooting Database.

Two students and two teachers were killed in Wednesday’s attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, the latest victims in a campus firearm death toll that’s surged in the last few years.

During a campaign stop hours after the attack, Vice President Kamala Harris called the incident “a senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies.”

“We’ve got to stop it.”

‘Building leaders for 2050’

Six and a half years after David Hogg survived one the nation’s deadliest campus shootings at his Parkland, Florida, high school, his latest campaign to bolster the country’s gun laws has drawn major support from deep-pocketed donors and Democratic Party bigwigs.

Hogg co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee that’s raised more than $8 million in the past year to help elect young Democrats who support gun control, abortion and other progressive causes.

My analysis of Federal Election Commission filings and the PAC’s digital ads offers insight into how Hogg has leveraged the trauma and lessons of surviving Parkland to create a well-connected operation to influence state and national elections across the country in November. Leaders We Deserve has already claimed some electoral wins for candidates in Virginia and deep-red Texas.

But the effort, former education secretary and PAC adviser Arne Duncan told me, is much bigger than the upcoming high-stakes presidential election. It’s about building the next generation of Democratic lawmakers.

“That’s what David’s play is about,” Duncan said. “It’s not about, ‘We’re going to change the entire world tomorrow,’ but it’s, ‘Can we plant a whole bunch of amazing seeds, nurture them, develop them, support them and see what happens.’”

Read the full analysis here

More on the Georgia shooting

They lost their lives: The victims are two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and math teachers Christina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall. | The New York Times

The perp: A 14-year-old student accused of carrying out the attack was taken into custody and will be charged with murder as an adult. | Athens Banner-Herald

The police response: Minutes after the shooting was reported, two school resource officers and other law enforcement arrived on scene. One of the school-based cops confronted the shooter, who was armed with an AR 15-style rifle, and forced his surrender. | CNN

An emergency alert system created by the security vendor Centegix was credited with alerting first responders to the shooting. The system includes a lanyard with a button that teachers can push to report danger. | WABE

Police interviewed the alleged gunman and his father more than a year ago, after the FBI received several tips about someone threatening to “shoot up a school” on the social media platform Discord. “The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them,” according to the federal agency. “The subject denied making the threats online.” | Federal Bureau of Investigation / USA Today

Just months after an unprecedented parental conviction in Michigan, Georgia prosecutors allege the father’s actions led to the mass school shooting | The 74

The shooter purportedly had a keen interest in past school shootings, most notably the 2018 attack in Parkland. | The New York Times

The big picture: This Georgia school shooting was, in many ways, a repeat of past tragedies. The most common scenario is “a surprise attack during morning classes committed by a current student who is allowed to be inside the school.” | K-12 School Shooting Database

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In other news

California lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation bill that would prohibit schools from serving food with artificial color additives that officials have linked to hyperactivity and other behavioral effects in children. | Chemical & Engineering News

A 33-year-old Latvian hacker has been extradited to the U.S. on charges of being a key player in the cybercrime group Karakurt, which has launched wide-scale ransomware attacks on K-12 schools. | The Cyber Express

Four states suing the Education Department over new rules to protect LGBTQ+ kids from discrimination have “a substantial likelihood that they will prevail on the merits,” according to a federal appeals court. | K-12 Dive

Meanwhile, the Justice Department and 16 states have weighed in on a lawsuit that charges a Georgia book ban targeting LGBTQ+ literature is unconstitutional. | The Guardian

Nearly 4,000 “dangerous instruments” — including almost 300 weapons — were seized at New York City’s public schools last year. “Dangerous instruments” is a weird way to say stuff like box cutters and pepper spray. | New York Post

Despite school discipline reform efforts, racial disparities in student suspensions persist. | The Associated Press

After six people were killed in a Nashville school shooting last year, Tennessee lawmakers passed zero-tolerance rules mandating a one-year expulsion for students who threaten mass violence at school. As a result, students are being expelled “for mildly disruptive behavior,” ProPublica reported, even when officials found “the threat was not credible.” | ProPublica

ICYMI @The74

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• One New York District’s Old-School Approach to Support Kids’ Well-Being

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Emotional Support

Mika, The 74 editor Nicole Ridgway’s pup companion, found a comfy spot on the beach to soak in some of summer’s final rays.