After Parkland they vowed 'Never Again.' Now they see glimpses of themselves in Texas

After their friends and teachers were brutally killed inside their school on Feb. 14, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School vowed that the children of the future would read about them in history books — as the faces of the final mass shooting in a school.

Three months and four days later, on Friday morning, law enforcement was once again mobilized to an American high school, this time in Santa Fe, Texas, near Houston. At least 10 people — the majority believed to be students — were reportedly killed and 10 others wounded in a shooting spree carried out by a teenager at Santa Fe High School.

Students ran from gunfire. They hid. Then they were walked out of school and in front of TV cameras, their shocked and melancholy faces broadcast into office buildings and homes across the country.

"It was so similar to watching my own students," said Stoneman Douglas AP Government teacher Jeff Foster, who watched the news on Friday with his students, many of whom are now recognizable for their gun-control activism following the Feb. 14 shooting. "Now it's coming to a school near you."

The Texas shooting, described by President Donald Trump as an "absolutely horrific attack," opened up old wounds in the hearts of the students, teachers and parents of the Parkland community.

The shooting in Texas came on the last day of classes of the school year at Stoneman Douglas. For seniors such as Emma González, who has become one of the faces of the so-called Never Again movement aimed at curbing gun violence by tightening gun laws, the last day of high school would forever be stained by more bloodshed.

Seventeen students and school staff were killed in Parkland on Valentine's Day when a former student smuggled an assault-style rifle onto the Broward County campus and opened fire. Student activists from the school sparked a nationwide movement calling for an end to gun violence, capped off by a worldwide demonstration, the March For Our Lives, at the end of March.

"Santa Fe High, you didn’t deserve this. You deserve peace all your lives, not just after a tombstone saying that is put over you. You deserve more than Thoughts and Prayers, and after supporting us by walking out we will be there to support you by raising up your voices," González said on Twitter on Friday.

The suspect in the Santa Fe shooting has been identified by police as 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis. He was armed with a shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver. A second person, also believed to be a student, has been detained, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. Gunfire reportedly erupted at the school at about 7:45 a.m. The Santa Fe Independent School District stated on Twitter that "explosive devices" had been found on campus and in areas outside school grounds.

Foster was teaching his first-hour class when early reports of the shooting in Santa Fe began spreading. He had been chatting with student Delaney Tarr, an MSD senior and an organizing member of the Never Again movement and the March For Our Lives, and both hoped it wouldn't turn out to be a mass shooting.

"Within the hour, it was like holy shit, three are dead, four are dead, eight are dead," Foster said.

His students, many of whom became activists following the Feb. 14 shooting, were angry and hurt, he said. While the students didn't express it explicitly, Foster said the mood in his classrooms throughout the day was one of hopelessness.

"We kind of feel like the Sandy Hook parents feel or the Columbine parents," he said, speaking to a reporter on his way to a bar, where he planned to meet with friends and decompress.

Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow was killed in the Stoneman Douglas shooting, said learning of the Texas shooting made him "sick to my stomach."

"I feel for the parents that this happened because there's nothing that's ever gonna make them feel better," he said. "Nothing has lessened since my daughter's murder on the 14th. ... There's nothing you can say to a parent that lost a kid to such a violent act like this."

Pollack, who has advocated for increased school security since his daughter's murder, said concerned citizens should focus their energies on local government and their respective school boards.

"The only way is to get involved with the school board where you live," said Pollack, the founder of the nonprofit Americans for Children's Lives and School Safety (CLASS). "Don't look to the president or the federal government to do everything. You can do it at a community level."

Pollack, who said he will push for schools to install metal detectors and single-point entry designs, was instrumental in nudging Florida lawmakers to pass a comprehensive school safety bill in March that includes $400 million for expanded mental health programs, new school safety programs and replacing the high school building where the Parkland shooting took place.

He has worked to push lawmakers across the country to adopt Florida's new law, which also includes raising the age to purchase a long rifle to 21 from 18 and extending a three-day waiting period to cover assault-style rifles. Florida lawmakers also enacted a ban on bump stocks, although they failed to pass any measure banning assault-style rifles, the kind used in the Parkland shooting.

"I'm working on things as fast as I can," he said. "This just keeps happening. We're working hard and we're gonna make change."

Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in Parkland, took to Twitter to express his sadness and call for a continued push for action.

"This has been my fear since February 14th, that another mass casualty shooting would happen before we did anything," he said in a tweet. "Now, we have 8 more children dead and our leadership in Washington has done nothing. We do not need thoughts and prayers, we need action and we need it now."

Kim Krawczyk, a geometry teacher who sheltered MSD students inside her third-floor classroom while confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student at Stoneman Douglas, killed six students outside it, learned of the Texas shooting as she walked to study hall on Friday.

"At first we were pretty quiet. I did not lecture. I actually went and got comfort items out of teacher planning," she said. "I just wanted them to be OK, as OK as we could be."

But there weren't tears, she said. Some students appeared numb to the carnage. Others questioned whether their activism made any difference.

"They think it's gonna keep happening," she said.

This story was originally published May 18, 2018 at 5:01 PM with the headline "After Parkland they vowed 'Never Again.' Now they see glimpses of themselves in Texas."