If February 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was a test, lots of folks flunked it.

A failure of epic proportions.

As a shooter wandered the hallways killing 17 and wounding 17 more, the school’s only armed officer hid.

Responding police set up a perimeter but stayed outside the school and didn’t rush the shooter.

Some of the school’s teachers and staff were poorly trained. Others forgot their training.

That heavy criticism was leveled in an official after-action report released in January.

It was a must-read for officials in Pennsylvania.

“These incidents are over within five minutes and huge casualties occur,” said Marcus Brown, director of Pennsylvania’s Homeland Security. “If law enforcement doesn’t take action immediately, it will result in more loss of life.”

Brown says with confidence that every law enforcement officer in this state knows what to do and is trained to do it.

“They immediately respond to where the gunfire is coming from and if it’s inside a school, like it was in this situation, then they’re going in the school and again listening for the sound of the gunfire and going toward the gunfire to stop the shooter.”

But typically in school shootings, police are not the first on the scene.

“These teachers with no training are expected to protect 40 kids. That’s a tall ask,” said state Sen. Mike Regan (R-York, Cumberland).

Regan helped craft last year’s Act 44 which gives $60 million to harden Pennsylvania school buildings and protect its children.

“They’re safer,” Regan said of the new law. “Are they completely safe? I don’t think anyone at any school anywhere can say they’re completely safe.”

Act 44 requires every school to have a security assessment, create a plan and drill it with students, teachers, and staff. But with 500 school districts, thousands of school buildings, and an aversion to Harrisburg mandates, uniformity of training and preventative measures is all but impossible.

“Because of local control in Pennsylvania, it’s difficult to say to the schools and school districts you have to do this, this, and this,” Regan said with a bit of frustration.

He wanted the law to include specific safety requirements and standards for every school in the state. He’s a former U.S. marshal and stopping bad guys was his business. His proposal of minimum standards was shot down in the legislative process.

“The schools are all over the place and I think it’s important that we get them at least to the exact same level,” Regan said. “Above that would be fine, but at least to that level.”

“When someone tells me it can’t happen here – it can happen here,'” said David Volkman, a deputy secretary at the state Department of Education.

And he said it a week before Lebanon County’s Jonestown Elementary School found it out the hard way. An armed intruder got into the building last week. The school’s security measures are being questioned. Nobody was hurt.

Luckily.

Volkman used to be a teacher and then superintendent at Susquehanna Township School District in Dauphin County. He was shocked years ago when local police recommended bulletproof glass in the cafeteria.

“Because it’s by a street and cars can do a drive-by,” Volkman said. “We had to have the trees cut down because shooters can hide in trees – things I wouldn’t even think about as an educator.”

Volkman, Regan, and Brown all say that the key is training. Police do it but teachers, staff, and students need to do more, they say. Currently, Pennsylvania students are required to do one safety training a year and nine fire drills.

“There hasn’t been a kid killed in a fire since 1949,” Regan said.

If funding is a measure of commitment, Regan wonders why this year’s $60 million for school safety was trimmed to $45 million in Governor Tom Wolf’s proposed budget for next year, a 25-percent cut.

“I think the message is still strong,” Volkman said. “We didn’t have $60 million two years ago and now $45 is building on what’s out there.”

The debate over funding for school safety will bleed into Harrisburg’s yearly budget fight. But the only question parents care about is are their kids safe when they go to school?

“I think we’re doing a great deal to get to that spot,” Brown said. But then he quickly added, “we’re never gonna be 100 percent. We’re never gonna know for sure we’re gonna be able to stop every single one of them.”

The Department of Education has a hotline to report anti-social or concerning behavior in schools. It also pushes an anti-bullying campaign. And some of the new funding is going to counselors who might be able to spot at-risk students. Intervention before a tragedy occurs is always preferable and worth every penny.

“We can’t turn the schools into prisons, throw up fences and magnetometers at every entrance and exit,” Regan said. “It’s just too expensive and not what people really want.”