ATLANTA – Georgia Republicans managed to push three school safety measures through the GOP-led Senate just before the Crossover Day deadline to keep bills alive in this year’s legislative session.
The only controversial measure was Senate Bill 61, which would let prosecutors try teens as adults for threatening violence at school. That would create criminal records that would dog the students into adulthood, unlike sealed records in juvenile court.
Two other measures received broad bipartisan support.
Senate Bill 179, which passed the Senate with just one ‘no’ vote, would impose a 10-day deadline for the sharing of disciplinary records when students in seventh grade on up transfer schools. It would establish a misdemeanor offense for parents who fail to disclose felony convictions against their children and give police seven days to tell schools when a student has been charged with a felony.
The legislation would also create a hotline for anonymously reporting potential violence on school property, and it would mandate annual suicide and violence prevention training for students in public middle and high schools.
Senate Bill 17, which passed unanimously, would require public and private schools to implement mobile panic alert systems and digital school maps integrated with police networks.
It’s called “Ricky and Alyssa’s Law,” after Alyssa Alhadeff, one of the students killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and assistant football coach Richard Aspinwall, who was among those killed at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last fall.
“Seconds count, minutes count,” said Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, the Senate’s majority caucus chair and the chief sponsor of SB 17. “Nothing will ever change what happened in Parkland or Barrow County. But I think we all agree we can make our systems better, our schools better, and make sure that our schools are as safe as they humanly possibly can be.”
Although Democrats backed the measure, they have been critical of the broader Republican reaction to the Apalachee mass shooting.
In February, Democrats opposed Senate Bill 47, which passed the Senate in a party-line vote. The measure would establish an annual 11-day sales tax break on firearms during the October hunting season. One Democrat remarked that her Republican colleagues were “tone deaf” to push such a measure through while parents in Barrow County were grieving.
Democrats would prefer gun locks, gun safes and other restrictions. Republicans noted that safes would also get a tax break under SB 47.
The measures are now sitting in the state House of Representatives. To become law, the House would have to approve the bills by the scheduled end of the legislative session on April 4.