NW Illinois News

Rep. Fred Crespo (D-Hoffman Estates) and Rep. Tony McCombie (R-Savanna) are working with the Illinois Education Association (IEA) on proposed legislation that would document which school districts are not in compliance with Illinois’ school safety laws.

Crespo said during a Dec. 15 news conference that the recent shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan created a sense of urgency to mitigate any similar tragedies from occurring in the state due to the disregard of obvious and troubling signs that the shooter presented.

“I want to give an example just recently in one of my schools, in my district, there was a student who has had some issues for the last couple of years,” he said. “Recently, I think what people wore these shoes called Crocs and they put little pins in them and he had pins with guns and he was asked to remove those. The same student pepper sprayed students in the parking lot. The same student was overheard by a staff member telling another student that he had a gun.”

Crespo added that the student ended up assaulting a student and was eventually expelled from the school.

“It is basically a violence prevention strategy, it’s not driven by punitive measures,” he said. “On the contrary, it's intended to help students and make sure that we keep teachers and students safe. It requires that each School District implement a threat assessment procedure and put in place a threat assessment team. Teachers should not have to worry about their safety and the safety of the students. House Bill 1561, which I offered back in 2019 with the help of Rep. McCombie, was passed in 2019 and signed into law on August 26 of 2019.”

Crespo said that law gives schools 180 days to put protocol into place that makes sure they abide by the statute that was passed in 2019.

McCombie said the priority is the safety of students and that the law was a means to streamline the many mandates that are out there in order for schools to follow an assessment plan.

Crespo and McCombie crafted the 2019 bill designed to enhance school safety and resulted in House Bill 1561, which passed unanimously in both the House and Senate, according to a news release.

“In Illinois we are often very reactive when we are writing legislation and in this particular case, we're not,” he said. “We're being proactive. The situation that Rep. Crespo mentioned is in Michigan and we just don't want that here. We hear every day more stories unfortunately about incidents in our schools. We need to keep our kids safe and keep our teachers safe and hopefully, this will be a proactive movement that we can do just that.”