Schools may be on break, but the effort to make progress on keeping students safe is not.

The Secure Schools Roundtable met on Capitol Hill today, sponsored in part by the two-year-old bipartisan Congressional School Safety Caucus. Key groups – including educators and students, lawmakers and law enforcement – were invited to discuss safety and security in K-12 schools.

Student activists are also working to keep the topic in the public eye. Teens from Parkland, Fla. – where Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was the site of a mass shooting in February – and other students are on a national tour that kicked off on June 15 in Chicago and was headed for Bismarck, N.D., today. A separate local tour is also happening in Florida, where yesterday officials in Broward County, which includes Parkland, voted to allow armed, non-law-enforcement guards in schools that don’t already have school resource officers. 

One of the goals of the tours is to register more young people to vote. The students see that as a way to move forward on solutions to gun violence. We are keeping an eye on the momentum of youth activism, which is also addressed in several of our stories today. The movement is in a position to influence not only school safety, but also, it seems, elections.

Now to today's five stories.