At a time when families should be celebrating the end of the school year, preparing for moving up presentations, and putting the finishing touches on graduation ceremonies, a school community is instead preparing to bury nineteen children and two beloved teachers. Four years after Parkland, ten years after Sandy Hook, twenty-three years after Columbine and eleven days after a deadly and racist mass shooting in Buffalo that took the lives of ten people, we are yet again mourning lives lost to another preventable tragedy. And we are asking, when will it end? When will critical legislative action be taken to ensure this type of tragedy can never happen again?
We are not only members of the LISC Charter School Financing team, many of us are proud parents first. We comfort our children as they endure active shooter and lockdown drills in their schools, trying to soothe their anxieties, and hoping the drills never become a reality. As parents, we never imagine sending our children to school and never having them return home again. Schools are supposed to be safe. What the families in Uvalde, Texas are experiencing right now is every parent’s worst nightmare. Our hearts break for them and we send them our deepest condolences.
At this time however, it is important that we send more than thoughts and prayers to the families in Uvalde, the families in Buffalo, and the communities across this country who have been victims of gun violence. We all deserve to be safe from gun violence. It is time for our lawmakers to take the steps necessary to keep us and more importantly, our children safe. No other right can come before our children’s right to be safe from gun violence, especially in schools.