A 3-day roundtable discussion series on school safety and gun violence wrapped up on Thursday with emotional pleas from Santa Fe students, parents and educators. Members of the Sutherland Springs community and Alpine ISD also joined the meeting. 

Several students spoke face-to-face with Gov. Greg Abbott, listing various ideas about what they’d like to see, including ways to improve mental health resources and security and school campuses. Grace

Johnson detailed the timeline of events of what she experienced last Friday. 

“When I walk out into the hallway, I see a kid get shot and he falls,” she said. “And in Santa Fe, we know what guns sound like. At our Veterans Day, we have a 21 Gun Salute, so we know what a gun sounds like. But you never think it’s going to be in school.” 

School security presence also needs to be increased, she told Abbott. 

“Our police officers, our school police officers, they’re our best friends,” she said. “You wave at them in the hallway, you fist bump them, they ask us how our days are going. In a way, they’re our watchdogs. We need more of them.” 

After the school shooting in Parkland, Santa Fe High School went on lockdown after reports of what were thought to be gunshots in the area.

“Gov. Abbott, we wrote letters to you,” Johnson said. “Our entire government class wrote letters on why you think this is happening and what we can do to fix this. And to us, we didn’t get anything back. We didn’t even get an acknowledgment and we just wanted to know that you got those because May 18 came around and it finally happened to our school and we weren’t surprised.” 

State Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, says the roundtable discussions have generated some consensus on preventing gun violence, as well as increasing mental health resources across Texas school districts. 

“As far as hardening our campuses, helping with security and those things, long-term [ideas] would also be like more intervention counselors on campuses,” he said. “We’ve got our counselors now doing a lot of duties other than counseling. Your traditional counselors a lot of times are being used for testing. I think we may be able to bring other people in to do testing and let counselors do more counseling.” 

Taylor’s district includes Santa Fe and he participated directly in Thursday’s roundtable after observing the first one on Tuesday. 

“I’m proud of that community,” he said. “It’s a very special place and you learn the strength of your community when you go through hard times like this.” 

There’s no one simple fix and Taylor says the tough conversations need to happen in order to minimize these situations.

“I wake up every morning thinking about the parents,” he said. “As a father of three and grandfather of two, we have to stop this.”

Alpine High School student Morgan Molsbee also attended the meeting. A teen shot and killed herself after shooting and injuring another student at the school two years ago. Molsbee is encouraging Santa Fe students to lean on one another. 

“At first, going to school after was scary,” Molsbee said. “Hearing the bells caught you off guard and you have to realize, yes it happened and it wasn’t good, but you have to move on from it and the teachers will help you.” 

Several parents urged leaders to make swift, thoughtful decisions as soon as possible. 

“If anyone out there thinks that this can’t happen at your school, if it happens in a tiny little town of Santa Fe, Texas, it could happen anywhere and it could happen today,” parent Kim Morrison said.