ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday signed a law that supporters hope will prevent future school shootings like the one that killed two students and two teachers on Sept. 4 at Apalachee High School northeast of Atlanta.
Richard Aspinwall, the father of the Ricky Aspinwall, one of the teachers who was killed, called Monday “a great day for advancing safety.”
“I don’t want anyone else to have to go through this,” Aspinwall told reporters. You see it happening all over the country. It’s got to stop. Some way or another, it’s got to stop.”
But like with most new laws, putting the words into practice will be key.
“Everybody’s got to work together,” Rep. Holt Persinger, the Winder Republican who represents Apalachee High School and sponsored the bill, said after the signing ceremony. He said that included not only schools and local law enforcement agencies, but Georgia’s child welfare, mental health and emergency management agencies.
House Bill 268 was driven in part by the belief among many that the Barrow County school system didn’t have a full picture of the warning signs displayed by the 14-year-old accused in the fatal shootings. School officials never became aware that a sheriff’s deputy in Jackson County had interviewed Colt Gray in May 2023 after the FBI passed along a tip that Gray might have posted a shooting threat online.
The new law requires police agencies to report to schools when officers learn that a child has threatened death or injury to someone at a school. It also mandates quicker transfers of records when a student enters a new school, creates at least one new position to help coordinate mental health treatment for students in each of Georgia’s 180 school districts and sets up an anonymous reporting system statewide.
Public schools will have to provide wearable panic buttons to employees and would be required to submit electronic maps of their campuses to local, state and federal agencies once a year.
The law also makes adult prosecution the default when children aged 13 to 16 are charged with terroristic acts at school, any aggravated assault with a gun, or attempted murder.
The measure, though, required only a reduced version of a student-tracking database that was once a centerpiece of the bill, after opponents raised fears that it could become a permanent blacklist of students. Instead, the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency was directed to create a database of students who an investigation has found threatened violence or committed violence at schools. The law directs GEMA to make rules about when names would be included and how someone could petition to be removed. But lawmakers didn’t specifically appropriate any money to GEMA for what they called an “emergency alert system.”
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith called the measure a “good start line,” but agreed cooperation would be key moving forward.
“You’re not always going to get the job done unless you communicate,” Smith said. “And you’ve got to understand what lanes they’re in. Law enforcement has a lane, education has a lane, and then you have the taxpayers who have a lane.”
Getting the law passed was emotional for many, including Persinger, who cried on the day it got final approval, and for the Aspinwall family
“It is part of the healing, but you never really heal,” Aspinwall said. “You always have your memories. It always hurts.”