News, Culture and NPR for Central & Northern Michigan
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
91.7FM Alpena and WCML-TV Channel 6 Alpena have been restored. Click here to learn more.

Michigan lawmakers form a bipartisan task force to improve school safety

A makeshift memorial sits outside Oxford High School in Oxford, Mich.
Scott Olson
/
Getty Images
A makeshift memorial sits outside Oxford High School in Oxford, Mich.

Michigan lawmakers are forming a bipartisan panel to consider school-safety ideas. The new taskforce in the state House comes in response to November’s deadly shooting at Oxford High School.

Republican state Representative Luke Meerman says schools have gotten better at keeping outside threats from getting in. But… “I think that the part we have missed is on the school mental health side. The line between a student committing suicide and harming other students is very narrow and they’re sometimes interchanged," he says.

Meerman says the task force could come out with some simple policy suggestions very soon—though a full report will likely take months.

The group is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

Colin Jackson is a reporter for the Michigan Public Radio Network.