In the wake of the shooting threats and nearly three-hour
lockdown that recently rocked the Gilroy High School campus, let’s
work to heed the lessons the incident provides.
In the wake of the shooting threats and nearly three-hour lockdown that recently rocked the Gilroy High School campus, let’s work to heed the lessons the incident provides.
A lot of those lessons center on the need for improved communications.
Topping the list for Gilroy Unified School District officials ought to be fixing the broken intercoms in all GHS classrooms. Lacking a means to communicate to teachers and students about why they were locked in classrooms led to rumors, confusion and contributed to a disorderly dismissal.
This community passed a $69 million school bond less than two years ago, and a huge chunk of that was earmarked for repairing schools. The GHS intercom system ought to top the list. And every GHS portable classroom needs to be hooked up to the intercom system, too.
Because these incidents aren’t necessarily limited to high schools, the intercom and public address systems at all GUSD campuses need to be checked and, if need, expanded and repaired.
One of the lessons from the recent stupid hoax is that the Gilroy Police Department’s active shooter response plan is well-designed. The police arrived on scene and locked down the campus for a thorough sweep with lightning speed.
But we also learned that the GHS/GUSD plan has some flaws.
First, although an orderly dismissal was attempted, the effort failed. Instead, after some students were officially dismissed with correct information about the incident, everyone else just left.
Wouldn’t a working intercom system have helped prevent that? We think so.
Then, a shockingly huge majority of kids used the hoax as an excuse to take the rest of the day off school. Of the GUSD’s 2,162 students, a paltry 786 finished the school day.
It’s bad enough that the threatening calls stole a three-hour chunk of the school day, but for roughly 1,500 students to throw away the rest of the day just gives the perpetrators’ stupid hoax even more power.
During the incident, rumors flew between students, teachers, staff members and parents via cell phones and pagers. The lack of reliable information from officials increased the stress of those in lockdown and those waiting on the outside.
“If we don’t release information to students and parents, they’re going to fill in the gaps with inaccurate information,” Assistant Police Chief Lanny Brown said. He’s exactly right.
But, instead of providing factual information about what was happening, GUSD officials simply denied rumors for parents.
“There’s no truth to a bomb on campus. There’s no truth that a teacher is being held hostage,” Assistant Superintendent Linda Piceno told the worried parents waiting near campus for word about their kids’ safety.
“No weapons have been found. No one has been taken off in handcuffs.”
Why not tell parents what was happening, instead of what was not? The same holds true for the worried students and teachers huddled in locked classrooms for hours – didn’t they deserve to know what was happening?
We suggest that GHS and GUSD officials and police administrators hold a public meeting to review the incident:
The meeting would address difficult questions such as:
• Do we need a larger police presence on GUSD campuses during non-crisis times?
• How can we better communicate with students and staff during a crisis?
• How can officials communicate with worried parents during a crisis and how can the difficulties their presence creates be minimized?
• How can we ensure that students stay in school after a like occurrence?
With a dispassionate review of events in a public forum and a public report issuing well-considered recommendations for improvement, Gilroyans can make sure that if – God forbid – another crisis arises on one of our school campuses, we’ll be as prepared as possible to handle it.
