Giving Compass' Take:

• Max Schachter, father of a victim in the Parkland school shooting, spoke to the Federal Commission on School Safety in order to propose new safety measures that could potentially be adopted nation-wide.

• How can schools cope with the higher costs of nuanced technology for safer schools?

• Read about how charter schools want to fund school safety.

On Thursday, the Indiana school’s high-tech security features were highlighted in Washington during a meeting of the Federal Commission on School Safety. But are the security measures at the Shelbyville, Indiana school a model of school safety for the nation? Max Schachter thinks so.

Schachter is CEO of Safe Schools for Alex, a foundation he created after his son was killed in February’s mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida. On Thursday, he outlined to Trump administration officials the promises of next-generation school security technology.

“If the door to Alex’s classroom had ballistic-hardened glass, he would still be alive today,” Schachter said during the meeting.

Following the mass shooting in Parkland, school districts across the country have moved to place additional security features in their buildings, and security companies have ramped up efforts to promote emerging products, such as surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology.

Despite the proliferation of school security technology, little academic research exists to show whether the products prevent school violence. And despite the heightened fear Parkland and other school shootings generate, school shootings are statistically rare and campuses have actually become safer in recent years.

A contentious debate over school security has played out in Broward County, Florida, since the district was shaken by the Parkland tragedy. Among new measures, the campus has additional armed security staff, upgraded surveillance cameras, and classroom doors that lock automatically. But the district ultimately decided against adding metal detectors, a decision that’s garnered pushback from some parents.

For school districts, Schachter acknowledged that security like bulletproof doors is expensive. “It would take a million dollars just to put these doors in Marjory Stoneman Douglas,” he said. “That’s just one high school in America. If you have a limited budget, you have to make those hard decisions.”

Read the full article about safe schools by Mark Keierbeler at The 74