U.S. Education Secretary tours site of Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School building, where the 2018 shooting — the deadliest in Florida — took place, and spoke with some of the survivors and victims’ relatives about ways to improve school safety nationally.

“To say that this morning was one of the most impactful moments of my life is an understatement,” said Cardona, 48, during a round table Monday at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel and Convention Center, the place that served as a reunification center for families back in 2018. Cardona had just toured the school campus in Parkland, where he saw walls pocked with bullet holes, opened notebooks frozen in time and floors stained with pools of blood.

“While walking with families through the building, I couldn’t help but ask God, ‘What do you want from me here? How can I take this horrible experience and do a fraction of what the families have done in the face of trauma and turn it into something that can help others?’” he added.

READ MORE: Who was killed in Parkland shooting? Here are their stories

Nearly six years ago, on Valentine’s Day, Nikolas Cruz, an expelled 19-year-old Stoneman Douglas student at the time, shot to death 14 students and three faculty members inside the three-story freshman building at Stoneman Douglas. In November 2022, a jury sentenced Cruz to life in prison.

Broward County school district officials have since preserved Building 12, where the carnage happened, intact, mainly for legal proceedings and politicians’ visits, but they’re now planning to demolish it this summer. Meanwhile, in the past few years, some of the victims’ family members have switched careers and launched projects to advocate for safer schools.

Cardona, a Connecticut native with Puerto Rican parents, entered the building at the invitation of Max Schachter and Fred Guttenberg, parents of two victims of the shooting. After, he met with Schachter, Guttenberg and other the relatives of victims like Lori Alhadeff, Debbi Hixon, Tony Montalto and Tom Hoyer.

READ MORE: ‘Like an eyesore.’ Why does the Parkland community want to demolish the school building?

Monday’s discussion also featured others like U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency Director Jen Easterly, U.S. Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Broward Public Schools Superintendent Peter Licata. Danielle Gilbert, a Stoneman Douglas alumna, and Stacey Lippel, a Stoneman Douglas language arts teacher, attended as well.

They talked somberly in front of a sign that read “#NeverForget” and displayed the 17 victims’ photos.

New laws, construction changes, more kindness

Parkland families recounted some of the laws at the local and state level that they have and are still working on since the massacre and advised Cardona, who joined President Joe Biden’s administration in March 2021, to replicate them as much as possible. For instance, they mentioned how the Florida Legislature raised the age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 18 to 21 following the 2018 tragedy.

They then told Cardona that culture changes need to occur after policy changes, especially by training all school district staff in the best practices.

Schachter read a quote that’s taped on the second floor of the Stoneman Douglas building: “It says, ‘Never live in the past but always learn from it,’ and that’s what we’re doing here today,” he said.

Alhadeff, the now chair of the Broward County School Board, mentioned how the Eagles’ Haven, a wellness center that targets mental health with support groups and classes like tai chi and yin yoga, opened in 2019 to help people process trauma. She suggested other cities could open similar center now, to be proactive instead of reactive.

Hixon, the now vice chair of the Broward County School Board, asked him to better advertise government resources already available so people can use them more. She also wondered if he could help communicate why this matters so much to communities that haven’t yet experienced a mass shooting.

“If it didn’t happen to you, you just don’t understand the urgency,” she said.

“It even impacted you differently when we said it in your office in Washington D.C. than when we told you our stories inside the building,” she added, looking at Cardona. “We need to engage people in different ways so they understand why this has a high value.”

Montalto emphasized that we can all be part of the solution by being kinder to one another. He also pushed Cardona to modernize school construction, including bulletproof doors and windows.

“When we’re in schools we see sirens for fire, exit signs for fire, sprinklers up above. That’s great but nobody has died in a school fire since the 1950s,” he said. “We need to build our schools and retrofit our schools to the threats they face today.”

Toward the end, Guttenberg told Cardona — who previously worked as fourth grade teacher, school principal, assistant superintendent and state commissioner of education in Connecticut — to remember how he felt inside that South Florida building forever.

“My hope is that when you go back to D.C., you take not just the lessons learned, but also the emotion,” he said, “and you make sure people do the hard work of stopping the next one.”