Vice presidential candidates Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sparred over school shootings and migrant students in their 2024 election debate.
Education actually made an appearance in the Oct. 1 debate, which CBS aired from New York City, unlike last month’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, which didn’t include any questions related to K-12 schools. But education remained far less prevalent than other issues, like the economy, abortion rights, and foreign policy.
The most substantive, education-related back-and-forth happened during a discussion about gun violence, and, specifically, what could be done to prevent school shootings.
There have been 30 school shootings that have resulted in 48 injuries and 12 deaths, six of whom were children, so far in 2024, according to Education Week’s school shooting tracker.
Walz, a hunter and gun owner who once had an A rating from the National Rifle Association, said he would support a ban on assault weapons in addition to other gun safety measures like background checks for gun owners and red flag laws that allow police to intervene when a gun owner might present a risk to themselves or others.
Walz, a former teacher, didn’t always have that stance. When asked about his previous pro-gun track record, Walz said he changed his position after getting to know the families of school shooting victims.
“I sat in my office [in Congress] surrounded by dozens of the Sandy Hook parents, and they were looking at my 7-year-old’s picture on the wall,” Walz said. “Their 7-year-olds were dead, and they were asking us to do something.”
Vance argued instead for increased “hardening” of schools by making doors, windows, and locks stronger and hiring more school resource officers.
“The idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience,” Vance said. “We’ve got to make our schools safer, and I think we have some common-sense bipartisan solutions for how to do that.”
Many schools have taken measures to improve security, like purchasing cameras, limiting entrances and exits to people with identification, and purchasing doors that lock from the inside. But those measures are still prone to human error, and if school districts don’t properly train staff on safety protocols, those measures could be worthless, experts have told Education Week.
Vance says migrant students are “overwhelming” schools
Responding to a question about immigration, Vance argued that illegal immigrant students have “overwhelmed” K-12 schools, blaming Harris and President Joe Biden for southern border policies that he says haven’t done enough to manage the flow of immigration.
“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed,” Vance said.
Trump and other Republicans have repeated the claim that migrant students are overwhelming schools throughout the campaign and in congressional hearings.
New York City, Denver, and Chicago schools have all reported thousands of newly arrived students in the past two years. And, in Springfield, where thousands of legal Haitian immigrants have moved for work opportunities, local schools have had to hire two dozen teachers to account for hundreds of new arrivals, according to the New York Times.
While many schools are feeling the strain, the problem isn’t ubiquitous, experts have told Education Week. In a public school system of 50 million students, 1 percent were foreign-born and had been in the U.S. for less than three years as of 2021, according to the most recent federal data.
In his rebuttal, Walz argued that Vance’s rhetoric around the immigration issue has had an impact on schools in Springfield. Last month, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, authorized a contingent of state highway patrol officers to provide added security to the Springfield school district after a series of bomb threats were made following Trump’s debate with Harris, in which the former president repeated a false rumor that Haitian immigrants in the town were stealing and eating people’s pets.
Vance was the first person on the campaign to amplify the rumor before the debate between Trump and Harris.
“The consequences in Springfield were the governor had to send state law enforcement to escort kindergartners to school,” Walz said during the debate with Vance.
