Tampa Bay area school employees slow to get training required after Parkland mass shooting
Fewer than half of Tampa Bay-area school employees have gotten the legally-required training to help them identify troubled students.
This story is the latest installment in our YouTube series, "What's Brewing,” investigative reporter Jenna Bourne's series of deep dives. Click here to check out the series and subscribe to our YouTube channel: The Deeper Dive.
Four years have passed since a school shooter killed 17 people in Parkland.
10 Investigates has uncovered a trend of Florida schools being slow to comply with a law – passed in the wake of the massacre – meant to help prevent future school shootings.
Fewer than half the employees at schools in the Tampa Bay area have gotten training, required by law, that could help them identify troubled students.
What we found has already prompted lawmakers to make changes.
February 2018 "Felt like...a horror movie"
Memories of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting play on repeat in Isabella Benjumea’s mind.
She can’t forget what she saw. More than anything, she remembers what she heard.
“The noises I heard, the sounds. The people screaming. The gunshots, obviously. The fire alarm,” recalled Benjumea.
She took a selfie in the car before heading into school on Valentine’s Day 2018 – a final moment of her childhood innocence frozen in time.
“I was in my English class,” said Benjumea. “We were writing Valentine’s Day cards because we were reading Romeo and Juliet.”
She said she first realized something was wrong when she heard a loud noise in the hallway.
“When we left, officers were telling us not to look down, not to look around us. But it was kind of impossible. And so we saw, like – I saw, like, blood, all these bodies,” she said. “They just told us to run. Literally, they were like, just run. Just leave. And as a 14-year-old, I just started running…I felt like I was in a horror movie.”
A former student with a history of mental illness killed 17 people.
“I had a friend who passed. [Alyssa Alhadeff] was my first friend at Douglas. I had just seen her the period before that,” said Benjumea.
March 2018 New training required
In March 2018, Florida lawmakers passed new school safety requirements in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act.
That law included a section requiring all school employees to get youth mental health awareness and assistance training.
The training is designed to teach school employees how to identify the signs of emotional disturbance, mental illness, and substance abuse, then how to engage with that student and connect them to the help they need.
“We learn what questions to ask, what steps to take next if we have concerns. And, you know what? It may potentially avert a crisis or a situation we don’t want our students to have to struggle with,” said Suzie Dubose, a youth mental health first aid trainer at Sarasota County Schools.
10 Investigates reporter Jenna Bourne asked Dubose if this training could help prevent the next school shooting.
“Quite possibly. Absolutely,” Dubose said.
But the law requiring that training didn’t include a deadline.
January 2022 Schools slow to train employees
In January, 10 Investigates asked the 10 school districts in the Tampa Bay area for the number of their employees who have actually gotten this legally-required training.
We found, nearly four years after the law was passed, most local school districts had fewer than half of their employees trained.
In the following chart, each value represents a percentage (%).
Hillsborough, Sarasota, Pinellas, Polk, Pasco, and Hernando County school districts were all under 50 percent, as of January.
In the Hernando County School District, only 8 percent of employees had gotten this training.
“It makes me feel angry,” said Benjumea. “I feel like teachers have to be more aware of who they’re teaching. You know, like, it’s our second home…There were signs from the shooter before this happened…There were cases of suicide after this shooting, and it’s so sad that they couldn’t get the help they needed…I feel like, as teachers, they should do their part to help these kids.”
10 Investigates asked Deb Giacolone, executive director of student services at Sarasota County Schools, why only 30 percent of employees there have been trained.
“So, the training is super important and everybody who works in Sarasota wants to engage in the training,” said Giacolone. “I think the time constraints are one thing. I think the competing priorities are another thing. I think that having so few trainers in large districts, it’s very difficult to make progress toward training each person. I think the time required to take the course – six-hour investment of time – is another factor.”
There are two ways to complete the Youth Mental Health First Aid program.
One is a six-hour in-person training.
The second is a two-part format – a hybrid of self-paced study and live virtual instruction.
Sarasota County Schools allowed 10 Investigates to sit in on one of its live virtual trainings on Feb. 22.
“As a mental health first aider, it is not about giving advice but rather giving hope to someone who may be feeling hopeless,” Youth Mental Health First Aid instructor Kelley Priede told the group of school employees over Zoom.
The Florida Department of Education tells us the class size for live training is capped at 30 people.
And school districts tell us that class size can be a challenge when you have thousands of employees.
“It’s going to take a long time to reach every single person who works within the district,” said Giacolone. “I definitely don’t think COVID is an excuse. But I can tell you this: We had a lot of competing priorities during COVID.”
Sarasota County Schools have recently started offering the training after school and on weekends to help speed up the process.
March 2022 Lawmakers take action
10 Investigates brought our findings to lawmakers in February.
“I’m glad you guys were able to show us exactly what was going on, because sometimes you pass laws and you expect the districts to follow it. But sometimes they don’t,” said Florida Senate Education Committee Chair Joe Gruters, a Republican who represents parts of Sarasota and Charlotte Counties in District 23.
After seeing what we found, Sen. Gruters added an amendment to his school safety bill that adds a deadline.
It would require every school district in the state to notify the Florida Department of Education that at least 80 percent of school employees have gotten the mental health training by July 1, 2023 – and every year after that.
The state legislature passed the bill, and it’s waiting on Gov. Ron DeSantis' signature.
“I just want to say thank you for bringing this to our attention. Without this investigation, we wouldn’t be aware of the noncompliance that’s happening in our school districts,” said Sen. Gruters.
Isabella Benjumea goes to school to learn, but now she wants schools to learn something from her.
“Learn from past mistakes. Learn from these situations. And require these trainings, so they can do their part,” she said.
Two days after the shooting, Benjumea wrote down seven pages about her experiences and feelings.
She allowed us to record her reading a part of what she wrote. You can hear her powerful words in her own voice, below.
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