Coral Springs High School student starts White House petition to make schools safer

Keyvan Araque calls for more funding for education, stricter security protocols

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – A student at Coral Springs High School has started a petition on whitehouse.gov in an attempt to make schools safer following the Parkland school shooting that left 17 people dead.

"It's very close to Coral Springs High and many of the people here, including me, have friends that went there when the shots began firing," Keyvan Araque told Local10.com.

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Araque is calling for more funding for education and changes to school safety procedures.

"We need more than five security guards per 1,000 students and to fix school security systems," Araque wrote on the petition. "In some schools, doors need to be locked from (the) outside whenever opened and substitutes can't lock the doors, so once they open, they stay open."

Araque said student psychological evaluations might also prevent more school shootings from happening.

Araque said the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School hit very close to home, not just based on its short distance from Coral Springs High School, but because of incidents that have also happened at his school.

Just last month, a 28-year-old man was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot up the high school.

Coral Springs police said Jean-Baptiste confessed to having called the school to say, "We are going to shoot this b**** up!"

Another man, Ryan Trollinger, was arrested at the school in October 2016 when he was 17 years old on accusations that he brought a gun to the high school and showed it to several male students during the school day.

Police said an associate of Trollinger's was also taken into custody and was found to be in possession of a seven-page manifesto from Trollinger that detailed his desire to be "the worst school shooter in America."

Luckily, no attack was carried out at the school. 

Click here to sign Araque's petition. 


About the Author:

Amanda Batchelor is the Digital Executive Producer for Local10.com.