Christopher Marlowe.

Our schools have always served as guardians of our children from drop-off to the bell at the end of the day. Historically, our focus and concerns as parents have been limited to grades, conduct, extracurricular clubs and sports. However, the common law doctrine of in loco parentis, latin for “in place of the parents” is an ancient concept dating to at least the 18th century. It recognizes that in order to effectuate the meaningful education and training of our children, teachers and administrators must be given some powers over their charges traditionally reserved solely for the parents of those children.

 Basic rules, codes of conduct and discipline, are areas in which we accept that our schools will act with authority as surrogates for the benefit of our children. Both to maximize the learning taking place, but also the very safety of our children. These responsibilities may seem to have changed in the aftermath of Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and so many others, but they haven't; the essence of the schools' role as parent is very much the same. The difficulty of accomplishing this critical task, however, has increased dramatically. We now have the benefit of foreseeability, akin to a crystal ball, that has taught us over the past 20 years that somewhere soon, unless a major reprioritization of school safety occurs, that another mass casualty event will occur.

With the dread that this foreseeable crisis portends, however, is an opportunity to address it. As a society, we certainly do not accept our children to be unnecessarily harmed in their schools today any more than we would have accepted it prior to the proliferation of assault rifles and mass shootings that have already infected the learning environment in every school across the country at every age level. Schools everywhere are practicing “Code Red” drills as the new normal, in an effort to meet their continued obligations of protecting children as their own—in loco parentis. We know that such events are foreseeable, which is why (too few) additional resources are devoted to it.

 One of the more significant evolutions in this effort has been the widening of the list of concerned individuals necessary to carry out this responsibility. Where in the past it may have been a local principal devising remedies intended to address singular problems with certain students or troubling patterns of conduct in one or two classrooms, now entire communities are beginning to play a major part in ensuring that a school's obligation to each and every child is met. This includes district and state level educators and administrators, as well as local, state and nationally elected lawmakers.

 Nonprofit organizations, attorneys, doctors and law enforcement officials are coming together to help the schools meet their continued obligation of keeping our children safe. On behalf of the victims of several school murder victims, including two from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, our attorneys and our colleagues in the legal community have analyzed and dissected safety protocols in order to identify the weaknesses that have facilitated the preventable murders in schools—murders that would never have occurred if the schools were as vigilant with their responsibilities as we would be with our own children at home.

From the filing of lawsuits to force everyone involved in child safety to address weaknesses, to lobbying in state capitals and in Washington, D.C., we have continued to seek a deliberate, methodical, and funded system to give those standing in place of the parents all the resources they need to both teach our children, and keep them safe in the process.

In loco parentis, an age-old responsibility for those educating and caring for our children, has not changed one bit. The community of parents and leaders, however, is only expanding in order to ensure that the degree of difficulty in this task will never serve as an excuse to meeting the challenge. Failure is not an option, and we are all each other's keeper in the effort to ensure that our children can rely on the safety of their schools as surely as they would if they were in their own home, with their own parents looking after them.

Christopher Marlowe is a partner with The Haggard Law Firm in Coral Gables. He handles a wide array of cases including those involving negligent security, pool drowning, auto accident and wrongful death.