The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • A10

PAGELABELTAG A10 THE PALM BEACH POST REAL NEWS STARTS HERE WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018 BROWARD SCHOOL SHOOTING STATE GOVERNMENT House rejects bid to discuss weapons ban ft' Sat Stoneman Douglas High student Christian Serwinowski enters a bus bound for Tallahassee on Tuesday. He had just attended the funeral of Carmen Schentrup, a fellow classmate and childhood friend, melanie bellthe palm beach post had been expelled from Douglas High, bought the AR-15 rifle from a Broward County gun shop a year ago, the sheriff's office said. Federal law prevents people from buying handguns at 21, but not from buying semi-assault weapons. "It makes no sense," Coey said. The students were well-versed in what they described as weaknesses in Florida and the nation's gun laws.

They called for expanded background checks and restrictions on access to assault weapons. But many of the teens had just taken on the cause following the Douglas High shooting. "We need change or we could be next," said Jakob Desouza, a sophomore who protested for the first time Tuesday. He says he won't stop until the Douglas students are heard. Said Desouza: "This is just the beginning." lramadanpbpost.com Twitter: luluramadan walk, which took them down State Road 7 and east on Holmberg Road.

Inspired by the students of Douglas High many of whom have turned anger into activism and coined the social media movement "NeverAgain" to advocate for stricter gun laws students throughout Palm Beach County participated in activism. Some at Olympic Heights in Boca Raton and Palm Beach Central in Wellington walked out Tuesday, although the crowds were far smaller than West Boca's. Boca Raton High and Park Vista High, in suburban Boynton Beach, held school-wide events, Avossa said. "This walkout is part of a grieving process," Avossa said. "I'm proud that they did it.

I'm glad nobody got hurt." Meanwhile, a mile down the road from Douglas High, hundreds of students piled into buses headed for Tallahassee, where they plan to confront lawmakers with their pleas for change. Cruz, a troubled teen who eter gate, the students said. Then they went through. West Boca 14-year-old freshman Kendrick Hong called it a "spontaneous demonstration." "It's just amazing that all of us just did it," he said. "No one should be afraid to go to school." "Our principal told us we can protest, but keep it in the school," said sophomore ZachCoey.

"But who's going to hear our voices there?" And the principal, Craig Sommer, ended up walking with the kids. "I'm really proud of the students that walked more than 10 miles to stand up for what they believe in," he said. "The kids exercised their democratic right and they really don't tolerate a lack of safety and we're going to do our best to provide that for them." During the walk, strangers and supporters stopped their cars to offer the students water and food. Police cars with lights flashing also accompanied kids on the Workshops draw officials, students in wake of shooting. By Kenya Woodard Post Capital Correspondent TALLAHASSEE A flurry of meetings took place in Florida's capital Tuesday in response to last week's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, with dozens of leaders in education, law enforcement, and mental health pouring into the city to participate in a trio of workshops organized by Gov.

Rick Scott. Some of those same leaders were to later attend a round-table discussion hosted by Scott on Tuesday night. The meetings come nearly a week after the mass shooting at the Parkland high school left 14 students and three teachers dead. A 19-year-old former student, Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with their murders. Meanwhile, as groups of Broward County students arrived Tuesday at the Capitol to visit with lawmakers and call for more gun control legislation before their rally scheduled for today, the Florida House turned down an attempt to take up a bill designed to prevent the sale and possession of assault weapons.

The AR-15 rifle that Broward County sheriff's investigators say was used by Cruz would have been covered by the bill (HB 219), which was filed in October but has not been heard in House committees. Rep. Kionne McGhee, D-Miami, used an unusual procedural move Tuesday to try to pull the bill out of committee and hear it on the House floor, but the House voted 71-36 without debate to reject taking up the measure on the floor. A Senate version of the bill (SB 196), filed by Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, also has not been heard in committees.

The shooting has left Scott, who is expected to challenge Democrat Bill Nelson for the U.S. Senate, and Republican leaders, who control the Legislature, scrambling with just weeks left in the 2018 legislative session. At the meeting of law enforcement officials, talk centered on keeping firearms away from those arrested under the Baker Act, expanding background checks before guns can be purchased and arming teachers. Across town at the Florida Department of Children and Families, social workers, behavior specialists, and mental health counselors hashed out ideas to improve mental health, including coordination of care and early screening. And at the Florida Department of Education, Commissioner Pam Stewart moderated a discussion on school safety improvement and security protocols.

Sheriffs and police chiefs, whose ideas will be packaged and presented to Scott for potential action, bluntly talked of the need to increase funding to expand the number of school resource officers, along with revamping how emergency drills are conducted. Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco noted that fire alarm drills have been conducted in his county the same way since 1958, while campuses are now designed in vast expanses. At the meeting about mental-health issues, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera posed the first question.

"What is it about the young males in their development or external factors or media or society that drives them to do these unspeakable horrific things?" Lopez-Cantera asked rhetorically, according to the News Service of Florida. "Because it's males. They're doing it. And I hav- ffl Gov. Rick Scott speaks Thursday outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, lannis WATERS THE PALM BEACH POST en't heard anything about that." The experts said that just a fraction of mentally ill people between 1 and 4 percent become violent.

"The angry young men is a pretty big group, but we're talking about a very small group that present a risk in our schools," said child psychiatrist R. Scott Benson. Dean Aufderheide director of mental health services for the Florida Department of Corrections said sociopaths need to be identified through screening before they can commit heinous crimes such as the Parkland massacre. Stewart opened the education workshop by acknowledging photos of the deceased projected on a screen. "I though it important that we be reminded of why we are here," Stewart said.

"When we see these photos, we are touched." The focus of this meeting turned to the role of counselors and school psychologists and increasing their numbers in schools. The American School Counselor Association recommends one counselor for every 250 students, but the number of students now being served by one counselor is nearly double that, at 381, accordingto the National Association of School Phil DeAugustino, guidance director at Flagler Palm Coast High School, said changing the above requires acknowledging that each professional handles different tasks. A school counselor's training prepares them to handle academic matters, not mental health, he said. More money to hire additional counselors also is needed, said Sam Him-mel, Citrus County's schools superintendent. Building relationships with students and getting them involved with school activities, like sports or service projects, can also be a venue to helping troubled students, DeAugustino said.

While interventions are helpful, prevention of more mass shootings starts with more gun control, said Stephen Marante, a student at Coral Springs High School who lives in Parkland. "We can't sit here and say we need to put more kids on sports teams," he said. "Now, we have to figure out how this kid can't get an AR-15 and shoot up a school." Tighter controls on access to guns is one of the issues Broward student Victoria Mejia, 15, said she talked about with legislators. Mejia, who attends South Broward High School, said making the trip up to the state capital was necessary so that lawmakers could "see and hear our pain." "This was important to me because (the shooting) shouldn't have happened," she said. "My sister told me she knows what the protocol is if there's a shooting.

That's not something she should have to worry about. She should be worried about her science project." The News Service of Florida contributed to this story. woodardkenyayahoo.com West Boca continued from Al intendent Robert Avossa. The West Boca kids who left school were shuttled back to Boca Raton in 11 yellow school buses around 3 p.m. For some, the West Boca walk was one of solidarity for those lost at Douglas High when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz walked onto campus and fired aimlessly with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, into a freshmen building.

For others, it was the echo of a cause that Douglas High shooting survivors have taken on an urge for gun reform and heightened security at schools. "To get into a school should be like getting onto a plane," said Zack Elliott, a junior at West Boca. The students, most not yet old enough to vote, described the walkout as their only platform. At the school, the principal, administrators and police tried to stop the herd of students as they approached the perim Parkland continued from Al stand, like a silenced chorus representing the dead in the latest American mass shooting: three teachers, 14 students, one gun. And on Tuesday, they kept coming, often two by two, but slowly amassing in front of the school.

Douglas students and others came to lay flowers by the crosses and Stars of David. Students from West Boca High marched out of class and walked in the sun for up to 10 miles to show support and to call for gun control. Pastors from churches outside Parkland came to provide comfort. Others came just because they had to see with their own eyes that one troubled young man could cause such a confluence of not just anger and loss but also of love and resolve. About another 100 young people gathered at a nearby Publix, boarded two buses and headed to Tallahassee, to tell lawmakers that they want sensible gun control now.

'You Matter' Apparently, somebody was secretly slipping red business cards with a heart and the words "You matter" into some visitors' pockets. All of it played out in front of the public lens of the ever-present media as news reporters with their notebooks, cameras and microphones weaved among the human tapestry. Maggie Remek visited Stoneman Douglas many times as a recruiter for Broward County's technical college. On this day, she fell to her knees and prayed in front of just a tiny portion of the sprawling memorial that stretches along the front of the school. The backdrop is a chain-link fence that is now a kaleidoscope of flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, hearts, signs some obviously written in the penmanship of small children: "Douglas High School.

I hope you feel better." "We don't even know each other, but we've come here Buses pick up West Boca High students who walked to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland to take them back to West Boca as Oliver llovar cheers them on. Ilovar said he traveled from Fort Myers to support the kids. He said he was impressed when he sawthe kids speaking on TV, "better than politicians." melanie bellthe palm beach post push for stronger gun laws. Another angry young person was Chris Grady, a senior at Douglas who planned on joining the Army upon graduation. He had one message for lawmakers who don't want what he called common sense gun safety reform, such as extensive background checks.

"If you are not with us, you are against us and we will be voting you out," he said. Alfonso Calderon, 16, also a Douglas junior and a co-founder of Never Again, took issue with some right-wing pundits claiming he and his peers were being manipulated by the anti-gun faction. "This is an all-student, grassroots movement," he said. For some, though, the river of grief at the school or the media circus at the Publix, was too much. They found solace at the other memorial at Pine Trails Park amphitheater.

Jordyn Laudanno, 17, was one of the last students to escape the deadly rampage from a student who had previously been expelled. She was laying flowers at the markers for the dead in front of the stage. "This feels like a more peaceful place to come. We don't have to look at the school," she said. jpacentipbpost.com to pay homage," Remek said.

A few feet down, two students hugged as they lay flowers in front of the cross and stars upon the grassy swale. Nearby, a mother wept to a TV news reporter about how one of the dead was her son's best friend and his photographs dot their home. "How do you move on? How do you move forward" she asks the reporter. Her question was not rhetorical. She seemed to really want an answer.

Remek, who lives in Cooper City, said somehow this community has wrenched something very special out of tragedy on this spate of this roadway. "I feel safe here, safe to say a prayer," Remek said. "It's good to see the beauty that emerges from the chaos." For spiritual leaders, the memorial allowed them a chance to reflect after days of funerals or providing grief counseling. For Rabbi Shuey Biston, director of outreach and development of Chabad of Parkland, the soul-crushing gravity of the situation came to bear upon him when he stopped by the school's memorial. "I just sat there and cried," Biston said.

"I really hadn't had a moment to process any of it at all. But this morning I went by and I stopped by each of the children's markers, I lay a flower and I spent a moment." His father, Rabbi Yosef Biston, tried to explain the phenomenon being experienced and witnessed in Parkland after a horrendous tragedy. He said strangers flew in from outside the state just to sit shiva the Jewish mourning period with the families of Jewish victims. "The Hanukkah candles, if you look in the box, they are many different colors, but the flame is the same," the elder Biston said. 'Enough' But there is also anger -so much anger.

Tyra Hemans, a Douglas senior who lost two good friends and a coach in the slayings, stood like a soldier in front of the memorial, stonefaced, holding her sign. "Enough," it said, along with other sayings and a drawing of an automatic weapon with a red slash through it. "People who we lost, if they were here today, they would want us to fight," Hemans said. "Each soul that was taken is each soul I have to fight for." Later, Hemans was at the Publix on Coral Ridge Drive, waiting to board the bus for Tallahassee, holding court for the cameras, giving a face to the new Never Again movement to.