The Oregon State Legislature’s House Education Committee unanimously passed a bill that would require schools to notify parents of a lockdown within 24 hours. It now heads to the House floor.
House Bill 3584 will direct schools to provide electronic communication to parents, guardians, and school employees about safety threats within 24 hours of a lockdown.
Representative Ricki Ruiz, who sponsored the bill, added an emergency clause to it, to get it passed faster.
“This is one priority bill that I dropped in a heartbeat,” said Ruiz.
“There is no question that we had to do something about this communication and hopefully we’re going to do just that.”
On February 3rd, Lane Middle School went into lockdown, scaring parents and students. Seventh-grade student Jim Chambers, and his father, Eric, testified at the House Education Committee meeting last week.
“The fear I felt in that moment was like no other fear I have ever experienced,” said Jim, who said he could tell by the way teachers were behaving that it wasn’t a drill.
“It would have been nice to know what had happened shortly after the incident, but the school never told students what caused the lockdown,” he said.
“When you don’t have information, your mind starts to wander.”
Fearing that he might not make it home, Chambers texted his mom, “I hope the world is better with me in it than without.”
“As a dad, you read words like ‘I might not make it home tonight’ and it hits you in a really profound way,” said Jim’s father, Eric.
“You think about your 12-year-old contemplating how he might be remembered, and you get a sense of the fear and the anxiety that he’s experiencing.”
Ruiz said he hopes what happened in Nashville Monday never happens in Portland, but he wants to alleviate some of the anxiety students and parents are feeling.
“These shootings in schools and fatalities of our children are becoming very frequent,” he said.
“Our bill does not address the violence and what is going on in our nation, but it does address communication, and how it’s rolled out, and the importance of having factual information.”