Twenty-five years ago, 11-year-old Jeremy Bullock was shot by a classmate on the playground of Butte’s Margaret Leary Elementary. It was reportedly the youngest school shooting death in U.S. history at the time.
In Jeremy’s memory, his parents, state agencies and education advocate groups are holding the first Jeremy Bullock Safe Schools Summit in Butte this week to talk about a growing crisis of violence in schools.
More than 150 teachers, school superintendents, law enforcement and mental health workers gathered a Butte convention center Tuesday.
Robin Bullock is Jeremy’s mother.
“The 25-year mark hit us fairly severely. 2018 was a horrendous year for student safety.”
According to Center for Homeland Defense and Security, last year was the deadliest year of K-12 school shootings in the United States based on publicly available data going back to 1970.
The Center reports 61 people, including shooters, were killed in school shootings in 2018.
Robin Bullock asked, "How can it be this bad and continuing to get worse?"
The Center says there have been eight school shootings in Montana since 1970, and at least nine people were injured or killed in reported incidents.
The two-day summit includes sessions on trauma informed school drills and emergency planning, how to use federal grants to pay for safety projects, and best practices for student and school safety.
Gov. Steve Bullock, Jeremy’s uncle, gave the summit’s keynote address Tuesday.