 Good morning everyone. My name is Robert Copeland, Superintendent of Lower Marion School District. Welcome to Penwin Elementary School. This has certainly been a week of civic engagement in Lower Marion. We had our middle school and high school students expressing their opinion about the issues on school safety yesterday. So it's I guess the governor heard about it and decided he'd come here and talk about that issue. At least that's the way we're gonna spend the auditor general too. So on behalf of our board members who are here, Dr. Gilbert, who's our board president, DeVan Lynch, a member of the board, Ms. Devonda Ventura and Lori Ackman. Welcome to Lower Marion School District and Governor. Welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I thank you and I want to thank you for being such a nice host for both of us today and all of us who really want to weigh in and do something about this this issue that I'm going to talk about. I think it doesn't, maybe it bears repeating, just over a month ago Parkland happened, a horrible tragedy, really unimaginable. And yet it has become the breaking of hearts, the killing of students, innocent students, has become something that has become part of life in America these days. I was corrected. I thought it was 2001. 1999 was Columbine. Kids who are seniors today have lived their entire lives. Their parents have lived the entire lives of their, the educational lives of their students, of their children with the specter of a Columbine or Parkland hanging over them. And that's just wrong. No child should go to school with the fear of not being able to come home. No parent should see their children off to school with the thought that maybe they might not return. I can't, I can't imagine as a father can't imagine that unspeakable tragedy tragedy should should ever happen to any family. And yesterday, as the superintendent said, students across Pennsylvania and the country spoke out, not just just for safer schools, but also for action to address gun safety. The auditor general told me he was at his alma mater yesterday in York County. And students, there's one, he said, articulate student, I don't want to steal your thunder here. But one articulate student said, you know, we're tired of hearing you say it's hard. We're tired of hearing you say you adults telling us how there's so many forces arrayed against common sense action here. We just want you to do something. We've lived our whole lives with active shooter drills. We don't want to do we don't live lives like that. And parents are saying the same thing. So it's time we do something. Again, as I said, a generation of kids have gone to school since Columbine. And politicians and they're right. The kids are right. Politicians. We politicians have not done enough. So here in Pennsylvania, we need to act to ensure that we're doing everything we can to ensure that schools are safe. Again, our children and our parents deserve that. As governor, my top priority is ensuring the safety of all Pennsylvanians, but especially our schoolchildren. And that's why today I'm proud to announce the formation with the auditor general Eugene de Pascuali the formation of the Pennsylvania School Safety Task Force. This task force will bring together key stakeholders representing parents, teachers, administrators, health care experts, law enforcement personnel, community members, they're going to give us recommendations on three key areas of school safety. This is their charge. How we can address the health care needs of students who need help. That's first. Second, how can we improve school safety in school buildings? And third, how can we improve teachers and staff responses should a violent incident happen? Other general Eugene de Pascuali and I will serve as co chairs of the task force joining us as vice chairs will be Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency Chairman Charles Ramsey, who before that was commissioner of police in Philadelphia, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators Mark de Rocco, the immediate past president of the Pennsylvania Association of School Nurses and Practitioners Judy Morgaton and president of the Pennsylvania Parent Teacher Association Benita Allen. Those four will serve as our vice chairs. And these folks will bring a broad variety of experience and education in public safety and in health care. We're all going to benefit greatly from their leadership on this important issue. What we're going to do is and we're still working on all the details, but the task force will convene six regional meetings across Pennsylvania this spring to hear directly from parents from teachers, students, community members about what their specific needs are. Again, the key here is we need to listen. We don't want to say here's what you ought to do. We need to listen to teachers. We need to listen to law enforcement officials. We need to listen to parents. We need to listen to the students. And that's what this task force is about. How can we as a Commonwealth help improve the safety of our children in our schools? The task force will also include input from school administrators, health and human service professionals, public safety officials and education community members so that we can best align our strategies to have the greatest possible impact. Several members of my administration are going to participate in these events also, including people who are here, Secretary, where's Pedro Rivera, who is Secretary of Education, Rachel Levine still is acting Secretary of Health. Very soon you're going to be next week, Secretary of Health, Secretary of Labor and Industry, Jerry Alexiak, who couldn't be here, and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Van Check of the Pennsylvania State Police. This task force will work to gather perspectives from all those who have a stake in school safety across the Commonwealth. They will convene groups in each of these six meetings. We have also put a setup, set up a website that is up I think today that asks everybody in Pennsylvania, you have an idea, you have a thought, you have a concern, express it directly to this website. So every citizen in Pennsylvania is actually part of this effort. This is something that we hope will lead to and expect to lead to a report sometime in midsummer. Again, we're still working out the details as to how long this process will last, but sometime in midsummer, we want to have a report and then really do what the kids are telling us we ought to do something. Let's figure out what we can do as a Commonwealth to deal with this issue. I don't even have the web address Bonnie, but thank you so much for asking. But we want to hear again directly from those involved. And I just want to thank the co-chairs and I want to thank Auditor General Deepa Squally for actually working together to make sure that we are doing something in Pennsylvania, not just saying let's put it off for another couple of years until something else, some other tragedy happens. Let's do something. And so this is the first step to figure out what we ought to do and it starts with listening. And so I look forward to the task force's work and I look forward to pushing to implement the recommendations, whatever they are, to improve the safety and security of our schools. So it's now my great honor and privilege to introduce someone who needs no introduction, the co-chair of this task force, the Auditor General of Pennsylvania, Eugene Piscuali. Thank you, Governor. And first of all, thank you for your leadership on school funding and on common sense gun safety. So thank you for that, which obviously ties into better education for our kids all over Pennsylvania. A couple of weeks ago, just like everybody else, I was glued to the television after the horrific shooting in Parkland. And so I have, you know, a senior in high school and a freshman in high school. So, you know, sort of just like any parent, you just can't imagine what that was like that day. And it was a couple of days after that, where I walked into was wagons her office, she's my chief of staff and said, you know, we've got to, we've got to do something about this. And our role is Auditor General. And so one of the things is we're going to be updating our audits on school safety to make sure that we're doing everything we can from the audit side. But then our teams, both the governor's team and even though we're both Democrats, we have these separate roles as I need to be the independent watchdog. And obviously he's the chief executive of the state. But our teams decided that, and obviously with our support, that just the audit side wasn't enough, that we needed to go on a listening tour across Pennsylvania with both of our roles as both governor and Auditor General, to come up with real solutions on what can be done now to fix this, because both of us, just as parents, let alone as public officials, are just tired of these mass shootings in schools. It's simply unacceptable. And so we're, I was honored when the governor asked if I was willing to do it. Of course, the answer was yes. We do have a lot of hard work in front of us in the next couple months to get this done in time so that we can try to get something done in this budget year and obviously move before beyond that for things that may take some other legislation. But I was at my high school yesterday where I went. There was two things that really stood out. One was they took me on a tour of the school and I remembered when I went there and when you haven't been in the building for a while, all of the different safety precautions that have been added for all the right reasons. And there was a part of me that was admittedly a bit sad about that, because I remember we used to be able to go in and out of every door and there was sort of a fun atmosphere to that for all the appropriate safety reasons. That doesn't exist anymore. And it hit me along with, you know, the governor saying that, you know, Columbine being in 99 that seniors today have lived with this their whole life, that that's the new norm. It's unfortunate, but it is true. But we have to accept that that's part of it, but also we have the power to change the future. And that's part of what this task force is about, because in meeting with some of the students afterwards and for a host of reasons, I don't want to give their names. But there was a couple of things they recognized. Number one was I had four students that I was talking to, and they were of dead, clearly different political philosophies. But they all recognized young students recognize teenagers. Sometimes we make fun of millennials, but they were clearly engaged not on just on this, but on so many other issues. They got it, that this is complicated, that there are a lot of different things that have to be considered. It's not just about guns or just about mental health and not to just say, just those are two minor issues. But they got it, that this is, even though they had pretty strong views on guns, but they understood there was a lot of things that had to go into to make our schools safer so that these type of shootings or any type of violence school doesn't happen again. And so one of the things that, you know, the governor I talked about is one of our, even though again, as we're both Democrats, everyone's going to have to get out of their ideological box to some degree if we're going to solve this. So we have a lot of work ahead of us. I know Representative Tim Briggs is here. Thank you, Tim, for being here, because I know at the end of the day, whatever recommendations we're going to have to work with the General Assembly to at least get part of that done. But the final thing I want to say, and the governor talked about it a little bit before, and I'm not upset, you stole a little bit of the thunder, but not much, not much. One young man, he was again, incredibly articulate, he, but he was exasperated. I'm not, it was just the principal, four students, me door closed, no cameras, wasn't putting on a show for anybody, said, we are tired of nothing getting done. They're right. So this is the teenagers of the United States get in. I was proud of all the students that participated in the peaceful way that they went about protesting yesterday. I know some of them ended up getting detention sometimes. There's a consequence for action, but they stood up. And they're not going to let us forget that we have to do something, but it's up to the collectively in public office to do something in the time is a tick. And so thank you again for the governor for asking me to be a part of this task force, more than happy to help lead it with you. And we're going to have this done, I think in late spring, because again, every single day that goes by is another single day that something could happen. So again, thank you very much. And look forward to working with you on this. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I want to say thank you to Tim Briggs, because we are going to be whatever the task force comes up with, with other whatever recommendations will be working closely with the General Assembly to, to make this, this work. So thanks for being here, Representative Briggs. And I will Bonnie get the website address for you, right? Kevin, Kevin is nodding his head. Any of us would be happy. And I'm speaking for everybody here will be happy.