{"id":112997,"date":"2015-04-23T18:07:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T00:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-wants-to-pin-safety-on-the-schools\/"},"modified":"2015-04-23T18:07:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T00:07:55","slug":"colorado-wants-to-pin-safety-on-the-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-wants-to-pin-safety-on-the-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado wants to pin safety on the schools"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Parker
Parker Semin, a 2011 Arapahoe High School graduate, prays Dec. 16, 2013, at a makeshift memorial bearing the name of student Claire Davis, who was shot by a classmate during school three days earlier in an attack. Colorado lawmakers are debating a bill that would hold schools liable for certain acts of violence.<\/span>Brennan Linsley\/Associated Press file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 The Colorado Senate on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a measure that would hold schools liable for certain acts of violence.<\/p>\n

The measure has been a priority for legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle, with sponsorship from both the Senate president and House speaker.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 213 would allow people to file lawsuits against schools if an act of violence occurred that could have been prevented. Individuals would be able to recover up to $350,000 in damages, as well as obtain investigative information regarding the incident.<\/p>\n

The impetus for the bill was Claire Davis, who was shot to death by a classmate at Arapahoe High School in Centennial in 2013. Davis\u2019 family requested information about the shooting from the district, but the district initially denied the request, forcing arbitration.<\/p>\n

Shocked by the resistance, Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, sought to remedy the situation by limiting a school\u2019s immunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents have a reasonable expectation that when they send their children to a public school, that the school and its employees will have taken steps to keep them safe,\u201d Cadman said.<\/p>\n

In the case of Davis, the shooter had a history of incidents, which the district deemed a low-level threat, despite the shooter shouting a death threat against a school employee earlier in his history.<\/p>\n

School superintendents are concerned about the bill, suggesting that it could have far-reaching implications on budgets. They also worry about knee-jerk reactions to the bill, including a spike in disciplinary action against students.<\/p>\n

The bill heavily was amended Tuesday to address concerns, including exempting a failure to suspend or expel a student as a condition for filing a lawsuit. Another amendment states that an employee is not subject to a lawsuit unless the employee\u2019s actions are intentional or reckless. A separate amendment created a two-year timeout for districts before damages would be assessed by a court.<\/p>\n

As a sign of gratitude to the Davis family for bringing the issue to light, lawmakers named the legislation the \u201cClaire Davis School Safety Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, supported the bill in committee and plans on supporting it again when it has a final vote in the Senate, which could come as early as Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Davises, they\u2019re not in this for retribution,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cThey\u2019re in this to prevent other families from having to go through this extremely painful experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Districts, bill says, would be accountable for preventable acts of violence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,13,3443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-school-safety"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112997"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}