ICYMI: Shaheen Questions Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on School Safety & Student Debt

**Shaheen read a recent email from a Dover High School student about her “intimate relationship with the idea of mass shootings”**

** Watch their exchange here**

(Washington, DC) – Today U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) questioned Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on school safety and student debt during an Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the President’s Fiscal Year 2019 funding request for the Department of Education. As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Shaheen highlighted concerns about student safety by reading a recent email from a high school student in Dover, asking why this seems to be unique to the United States, and urging Secretary DeVos to look at the role of guns in her commission on student safety. The email Senator Shaheen read is excerpted below:

“It should be known that I am a student, and that February 14, 2018 [the day of the Parkland shooting], was not the first time in my life that I have stayed up at night thinking extensively about how I would react in a situation such as a school shooting… I, at 16 years old, should not have an intimate relationship with the idea of mass shootings.  But I do.  And so does every one of my friends, so do my parents, so does my nine year old brother and so does the rest of the country.”

Shaheen then questioned Secretary DeVos on her proposed budget cuts, noting that New Hampshire students have the second highest student loan debt in the country and that the Secretary’s proposed cuts will force students to take out even more loans.

Watch their exchange HERE.