A new task force that was setup from passage of a bill in this last legislative session to improve safety and security in schools recently held its first meeting.

Iowa District 47 Representative Carter Nordman says following the Perry School District shooting on January 4th, he led a bill that was passed and signed into law to ensure students are safe at school. He points out that as part of the bill was the creation of a task force that includes superintendents from larger and smaller schools, a School Resource Officer, private school CEO, various school board members, and several state agencies such as the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security, and master builders from the private sector, among others. Nordman talks about the goal of the task force.

“That would look hard at the school safety building codes and possibly create a standard. So again, we can kind of give a bar or a floor on what schools should be doing to ensure that the students, and staff, and teachers are safe during the school day.”   

Nordman describes the fine line that the task force should walk when coming up with proposals of making schools safer.

“We want to ensure that we are hardening our schools, ensuring that they are safe, (and) using technology where technology can be deployed. But we also don’t want our schools to be like jails. We don’t want bars on the windows, we don’t have big fences around schools, we need to ensure that we still have a welcoming environment for students to learn.”     

Nordman adds the task force will have several other meetings with the goal of having recommendations to present to the state legislature for next year’s session. The task force would be dissolved in December.