Mayor McEachern: We must do everything we can to assure our schools are safe

With all our city has to offer, walking my daughter up the hill to New Franklin Elementary is without a doubt my favorite. Nothing comes close. I get to hear about the Mario movie, the playdates she’s planning and that her favorite sandwich is sun-butter and jelly.

But the questions were different on a beautiful Friday morning when she asked why bad people want to hurt her. Along with every other parent I had to imagine my daughter as a victim to gun violence last week when our high school was threatened by a perpetrator that was located with several firearms and ammunition. That’s tough to shake.

This is the second threat this year. As my daughter started kindergarten, I would not have imagined we would have the same amount of school days canceled for snow as threats of violence.

As mayor and as a parent, I want to first thank Superintendent McLaughlin and all school officials. Zach made the right call, but also struck the right tone by recognizing the emotional toll this takes. It’s also important to note the strength and courage of our school staff that dedicated themselves to transitioning our children smoothly back to school. We thank you.

Our police also got it right. Quick to action over the midnight hours, I saw Chief Newport the morning after and it was clear he hadn’t slept more than a wink. They did the job they always do and we arrested the perpetrator so school could resume. On Friday, the police were there to assure our schools were safe. We thank you.

It’s easy to feel helpless against what we are facing as a city, state and nation. The pain that we’ve learned to normalize makes it challenging to find our next steps. How can we take action in a way that acknowledges the depth of this challenge? It’s a question that my wife, Lori, and I often struggle with.

In the wake of tragedies or close calls the loudest voices often fall into two camps. Either we’re going to make the schools impenetrable or we’re going to prevent anyone from getting a gun.

I’ve learned over the past several years that if you want improvement it usually takes more than one approach and also requires collaboration.

First, we must do everything we can to assure schools are safe with investment on the local level. This means continually improving our protocols but also a budget that includes a plan for school resource officers as a fixture of the elementary schools. We have them at the high school and middle school.

I’ve heard concerns around officers in our schools, either because we could be spending that money on other needs like language teachers, or that our youngest shouldn’t be subjected to feeling they are on lockdown everyday. I sympathize but guns won’t disappear tomorrow, nor will the people that wish to cause pain. It’s our responsibility to make safer schools and to acknowledge we have a gun violence problem that won't be solved tomorrow.

We must also work to keep guns out of the hands of would-be school shooters. This recent suspect had a rap sheet. Why did he also have easy access to firearms, ammunition and body armor? Background checks, waiting periods, red flag laws are all common sense things we can agree on. By implementing these small steps we can immediately fight the leading cause of death for American children: gun violence.

We also need to move away from a recent trend in New Hampshire to eliminate any common-sense gun restrictions. In 1991, Portsmouth banned guns in schools and other municipal buildings. I’ve yet to meet a person who wants guns in schools but apparently they all run for the New Hampshire legislature, because they tried to preempt our ordinance in 2003 and again in 20111. We continue to enforce it, believing the federal law gives us authority, but last year our governor signed a law barring cities from enforcing any federal gun law. We will keep our schools safe despite these laws, not because of them.

We don’t have time for inaction when it comes to keeping our kids safe. We must work together to tackle this issue as a city, state and nation. That’s always the answer to tough problems but especially true today. Let’s listen to each other and work together to make change before we’re talking about what we could have done.

Deaglan McEachern is the mayor of Portsmouth.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth mayor: We must do everything to assure our schools are safe