The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., back in 2018 prompted lawmakers to pass new laws to make schools safer through physical changes, as well as requirements that deal with students’ mental health.  

Reports show the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, suffered from several mental health disorders prior to the shooting.

Selin Ciltas is on a quest to increase mental health awareness and resources for students.

She recently graduated from high school in Orange County and says her motivation is to make things better for other students, including one in particular.

“I know my sister — she’s in public school right now — she’s going through the same thing that I went through, I want the best for her,” said Ciltas.

“I wish that I could’ve had a stronger foundation, and I hope that with improvements, she can have the foundation that I wished to have.”

Ciltas is now beginning her freshman year at the University of Florida and she’s already completed summer course work there. 

She’s still focused on pushing for change in Florida’s public schools and has created a Change.org petition that calls for more than the current five hours of required mental health instruction time in schools. 

While still in high school, she was also on a student panel that worked Orange County school administrators to improve student access to mental health resources.

“We really just wanted to ensure our peers were really focusing on getting the best support that we can,” said Ciltas.

Ciltas says she was happy to see the legislation passed following the shooting in Parkland, and saw some of the changes implemented in her last two years of high school. 

One of the new measures requires schools to have mental health coordinators whose jobs are to better connect students with community resources so they can more effectively manage mental health challenges.

“It was a step in the right direction — the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act definitely implemented a lot of things that students wanted to see,” said Ciltas.

But she says it hasn’t gone far enough. 

“From where I graduated from, a lot of students didn’t even know we had access to a social worker," she said. "We had a social worker that was available to our schools a couple times a week, and without understanding that they have access to these resources, how are they supposed to utilize them?"

Lauren Parker is a school psychologist who has worked in Central Florida schools and is on the Executive Board for the Florida Association of School Psychologists. She said the changes have given schools the opportunity to prioritize social emotional learning — even at the elementary school level.

“We used to say if you are worried about a friend or yourself, go to an adult and say something," she said. "But we never taught them what that looked like. And so now we have the opportunity to teach them what does it look like if your friend is experiencing depression.”

But Parker said the newly-passed Parental Rights in Education law is forcing some school psychologists to be very cautious.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing it right, and we want to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that supports our young people,” she said. “So as school districts figure out how the new legislation is changing some of that, there’s a little bit of a pause to make sure they don’t get into any legal trouble in any way.”

Ciltas said state legislators need to go further with legislation, and school districts need to do more to make sure new laws are helping students stay safe.

“You can mandate as much education as you want, but without implementing that education and ensuring that it’s a resource that students can utilize, then why is the resource available?” said Ciltas.

New laws require that school safety officers undergo crisis intervention training, and that school districts report the number of students sent for involuntary mental health evaluations each year.

They also require school administrators to take every step possible to notify a child’s parent before removing that student from school for an involuntary mental health examination.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri is the chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, which recommends policies and measures for the legislature to consider enacting into law.  He says the commission’s work is far from over.

“So, if the kid exhibits certain sign, if we can keep that kid from being Baker Acted and get them into immediate services, that’s what those mobile response teams are,” he said. “They have to respond within an hour, and then they manage that kid for seven days to get them services.

"So there’s a lot being done, but there’s still a lot to do.”