It takes a village.
It’s an old cliché, but it’s true for nonprofits, municipalities, counties and school districts trying to respond to the shooting at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The groups are finding social change impossible without focus and unity.
Thursday morning at the Easton Boys & Girls Club on the city's South Side, local officials including Mayor Sal Panto Jr. and city police had a small meeting -- the first of many, they hope -- to discuss changes needed to protect Easton’s young people, not just after Sandy Hook but in the face of violence as a cultural norm.
“Children and adults, they accept that violence is normal, and I don’t even know how to address that,” said Easton Weed and Seed Director Laura Accetta.
G. Dean Young, director at the Easton Boys & Girls Club, said there needs to be an adjustment in the education of both children and adults.
“I had a (student’s) grandmother who looked me in the eye and told me, ‘I tell (my grandson) to punch back,’” Young said. “You should be teaching them how to walk away, how to avoid conflicts.”
But there’s another type of education children need at schools, according to police officer John Remaley.
“Short of waiting for laws to be passed, my first thought would be training people to react,” Remaley said. “One of the things they need to look at is an active shooter training for school districts.”
Remaley said such trainings have been unpopular because of the uncomfortable feelings they create but that they are as important as fire drills.
There are thousands of factors, from neighborhoods where most residents are commuters and do not know each other, to media portrayals of shooters, according to the officials at Thursday’s event.
Addressing them requires comprehensive approaches, which is why the officials hoped to have more sessions and interact with more members of local governments, school district officials and residents.
Just a few years ago, large glass windows were the architectural standard at schools and other facilities as a way of giving the students a feeling of openness.
“Too many schools today are not built for function, they’re built for beauty,” Panto said.
The Boys & Girls Club, which also is a new building, has large glass windows. Even with the club's front door locked, Remaley said the glass windows could be broken.
There are cameras in the club, but, Young said, “those are for after-the-fact.” However, one major security standard always is in place: If an adult leaves the room, the door is locked, Young said.
One solution is to put metal plates on doors to allow them to be securely locked. In the short term, the problem facing learning institutions is not preventing these events from happening, but reducing the amount of damage a shooter causes. Locked doors could deter a killer until authorities can respond, Panto said.
Regarding gun violence, there is no cure-all, according to Accetta and others.
But even as mental health, violence in culture and improved security came up at the meeting, the conversation didn’t steer far from firearms.
Officials present said meaningful gun law reform needs to take place.
Panto was one of hundreds of mayors, including Mayor John Callahan of Bethlehem, Mayor Gerald Gross of West Easton and Mayor David Perruso of Wilson Borough, to sign the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition letter recently sent to President Barack Obama.
The letter lists specific steps the administration can take, such as closing loopholes that allow private gun show dealers to sell weapons without background checks on buyers.
But Panto said he does not believe in taking away guns from law abiding citizens, and believes it’s not an issue of “gun control” but an issue of “gun law reform.”
Easton Boys & Girls Club Executive Director G. Dean Young asks anyone who has