When a broad group of parents, educators and activists met in late October at a government office building in Arlington, Virginia, they gathered around a shared goal: Make America’s schools safer.
There, three parents whose children were killed in mass school shootings sought to bolster student mental health and crisis intervention services. Some advocates favored increased school policing and physical security while others sought to limit how those hardening measures can harm children’s civil rights. Each was there as a check on recommendations being made by the federal government.
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But membership on the 26-person committee, which was created through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 — passed in the wake of mass shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket — was short-lived. On Monday, the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, all members were terminated. For members of the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse External Advisory Board, the October gathering was the group’s first time meeting — and also its last.
A letter signed by Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman and obtained by The 74 said the decision was part of a wider effort to ensure the agency’s “activities prioritize our national security.”
“Future committee activities will be focused on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities,” Huffman wrote in the letter. “To outgoing advisory board members, you are welcome to reapply, thank you for your service.”
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In an email to The 74, a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security said the agency “will no longer tolerate any advisory committee which push[es] agendas that attempt to undermine its national security mission, the President’s agenda or Constitutional rights of Americans.” The official did not elaborate on how the committees may be undermining the new administration’s mission. But Trump and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, the president’s pick for homeland security secretary, have made clear their priorities for DHS are focused squarely on immigration enforcement and have proposed cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which steers the school safety clearinghouse.
In fact, DHS fired all members of its various committees this week to eliminate what it deemed as “the misuse of resources,” including those focused on emergency preparedness and cybersecurity. The move comes as schools and education technology providers nationwide face an onslaught of cyberattacks.
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But school safety committee members who spoke with The 74 said the group included experts from diverse perspectives — all focused on ensuring the effectiveness of a federal school safety initiative created during Trump’s first term. While the advisory board was created by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a sweeping $1.4 billion law that includes stricter gun control measures and violence prevention programs, its purpose was to provide expertise and best practices to the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse. The clearinghouse is an interagency effort the Trump administration launched in 2020 to improve national school safety efforts. It includes the creation of SchoolSafety.gov, a “one-stop shop” of resources for school leaders looking to foster safer campuses.
Tony Montalto stands next to a photo of his daughter, Gina, at his home in Parkland, Florida. Gina was shot to death as she worked on a project in the hallway at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. (John McCall/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images)
Among the people who advocated for the committee’s creation — and was ultimately dismissed from it this week — is airline pilot Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina was killed in 2018 during the mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Montalto is now president of the nonprofit Stand With Parkland, which was created by the parents of the Florida shooting to advance bipartisan campus security efforts.
In an interview with The 74 on Wednesday, Montalto said he is “disappointed that the members have been dismissed,” and hopes to serve again on the board, which is congressionally mandated.
“Too often the government gets involved in ‘government speak’, and we wanted to bring this external advisory board to life so that real people from outside of government could come together and have input into the process of keeping students and teachers safe at school,” Montalto said. He said the board members, which were appointed during the Biden administration, represented a “broad cross-section” of experts and opinions with a shared interest in student and teacher safety.
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Those terminated from the board include district superintendents from Georgia, Washington and Minnesota; National Association of Secondary School Principals CEO Ronn Nozoe; National Disability Rights Network Executive Director Marlene Sallo; and National Association of School Resource Officers Executive Director Mo Canady.
Also gone from the advisory board are Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed in the 2012 mass school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and Michele Gay, whose 7-year-old daughter Josephine was also among the 20 first-graders and six adults gunned down that day in Newtown, Connecticut. Hockley is the nationally known co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit that trains students on how to recognize the signs of violence. Gay is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Safe and Sound Schools, which focuses on bolstering campus security.
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Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union who served on the advisory board until this week, said the varied and wide-ranging viewpoints among members stood out most during their first meeting in October.
“There was really an effort to get as many perspectives as possible into the room, and I don’t think there was any preconceived notion on where we were going,” Marlow said. “We were not given any instructions, like ‘We would like to see you do X.’”
During the day-long session, he said, committee members were divided into three groups to discuss improvements to federal school safety grants and to analyze various security interventions like school-based policing.
Marlow said it’s possible that the Trump administration could appoint new board members who are not in lockstep but fears the shakeup could eliminate experts whose viewpoints don’t align with those of the Trump administration and “handcuff the quality” of the group’s work.
“I hope it’s not the latter because, at the end of the day, we should be focused on doing the best for keeping our kids safe — or, in the language they’re using, protecting the homeland,” Marlow said.
Still, Marlow said he plans to reapply for his seat. So, too, does Montalto, who said the Clearinghouse first created by Trump is “actually one of the most efficient programs in the government” with four agencies coming together to provide resources designed to keep students safe.
Important, too, are the voices of parents who’ve experienced tragedy firsthand.
“Anybody who has suffered that loss can drive home the point of how important school safety is,” Montalto said. “It’s a nonpartisan issue, we just need to come together as an American family and try to make a difference.”
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