By Tom Loftus and Mandy McLaren, Louisville Courier Journal

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(Photo: David R. Lutman, Special to CJ)

FRANKFORT – The shooting at Marshall County High School that killed two students and injured 18 others a year ago this month was the kind of tragedy that demanded a government response.

That response may come during this year’s regular legislative session, which begins Tuesday.

The Marshall County shooting was followed less than a month later by an even deadlier tragedy — a shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 students and staff dead. 

At the time, leaders of the Kentucky General Assembly decided on a deliberate response to develop a thoughtful and effective plan to address the complex issue of school safety.

They created a working group to travel the state to hear from experts, educators, students, law enforcement and the families of victims of the Marshall County shooting.

That group has completed its work, and is expected to file its product as a bill this week.

“It will be comprehensive — by that I mean it will look at the infrastructure of schools as well as softening of schools,” said Sen. Max Wise, a Campbellsville Republican who co-chaired the working group. “… By ‘softening’ I’m talking about relationships, the roles of school nurses, guidance counselors and mental health professionals and having the resources available for students that need that support.”

The 16-member group worked for eight months and held five public hearings across the state.

What emerged at the hearings was a consensus on the need to increase students’ access to mental health resources, provide more districts with school resource officers and update school buildings to make them safer. Democrats and Republicans also  consistently agreed that arming teachers — an idea pushed last year by President Donald Trump — is not the solution.

Wise declined to describe details of the bill, saying they are not quite final and the bill is still being drafted.

“It will be a bipartisan piece of legislation. That is my intention,” Wise said. “It’s important we are unified as we can be on this because this is such an important topic that affects our children, grandchildren, school staff and faculty.”

One issue that will not be part of the bill is gun control. And that means the bill is not comprehensive, according to Rep. George Brown Jr., a Lexington Democrat who was a member of the working group.

Brown said any bill that enhances the work of “school resource officers and mental health professionals and those kinds of things would be helpful.”

But, he said, “Guns and the proliferation of guns are the elephant in the room. If we don’t address that we’re just putting a Band-Aid on an amputation.”

Wise said the working group avoided gun control “because if we start the conversation with gun control, we could easily erode any bipartisanship that I think we need to have with this issue.”

He said lawmakers are free to file separate bills on gun control.

Brown has done just that. But for years bills calling for gun control have gotten nowhere in the Kentucky General Assembly.

Wise also acknowledged many important things his bill will facilitate — such as the hiring of more mental health counselors or security improvements for school buildings — will cost money. 

For now, he said he could not estimate the cost. But he said his bill will be accompanied by a “fiscal note” outlining its cost. And he said the bill will require additional funding starting next year when the General Assembly considers the state’s 2020-22 budget.

He said a Cabinet for Health and Family Services official told the working group of the possible availability of Medicaid dollars to help fund school nurses and mental health professionals.

Otherwise, the school safety program will have to compete against other state programs for dollars in a General Fund that will be greatly limited because of the need to pay down Kentucky’s public pension debts that total nearly $43 billion.

But Wise said he expects funding for school safety will be a priority next year. 

“Expectations are very high in the commonwealth for us to do something meaningful about the topic,” Wise said.

At the local level, some Kentucky school districts have pushed for tax increases in order to pay for more police officers in schools. In 2018, the number of school resource officers in Kentucky increased from 271 to 405, or nearly 50 percent, according to the Kentucky Center for School Safety.

Jefferson County Public Schools, the state’s largest district, is considering creating its own police force. But “hardening schools” can’t be the state’s only response, JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio told lawmakers in November.

“It’s very tempting to just get caught on the hard side of the stuff surrounding school security,” said Pollio, who is pushing for each of JCPS’ 156 schools to have a mental health counselor.

“Without that side of things, I don’t know if we’ll ever hit the mark,” he said.

Reporter Tom Loftus can be reached at 502-875-5136 or [email protected]. Twitter: @TomLoftus_CJ.

Mandy McLaren: 502-582-4525; [email protected]; Twitter: @mandy_mclaren. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/mandym.