GILROY
– With more than a week to digest the events at Gilroy High
School on May 14 – the day a gun threat triggered a campus lockdown
– police and school officials have found two ways to improve their
handling of the situation.
By next year, teachers in Gilroy Unified School District
classrooms will be able to use their computers to check breaking
information on a lockdown.
GILROY – With more than a week to digest the events at Gilroy High School on May 14 – the day a gun threat triggered a campus lockdown – police and school officials have found two ways to improve their handling of the situation.
By next year, teachers in Gilroy Unified School District classrooms will be able to use their computers to check breaking information on a lockdown.
And, when the lockdown is lifted, police officers will stay on campus to answer questions parents and students may have.
“I think that would go a long way in showing we’re not some invading Gestapo,” Assistant Police Chief Lanny Brown said. “We’re there in this way for everyone’s safety.”
GHS Principal Bob Bravo suggested the latter idea during a debriefing Friday between the school district and the police, Brown said.
Many of the rumors that rang through the campus May 14 via cell phone and text messaging were fueled in some part by students who saw police with rifles and automatic weapons combing through the campus searching for a student with a gun.
Rumors swirled, for example, that a student was holding a teacher hostage at gunpoint. Yet, the students who made the threat to shoot a teacher never set foot on campus.
The rumor mill stayed alive long after the lockdown ended because parents, who had heard many of the rumors when their children contacted them, did not have a means of receiving reliable and immediate information.
In theory, if parents see an officer on the campus, they could get information from him or her.
At the debriefing Friday, police and school officials agreed that both agencies were stellar in reacting to the immediate threat. However, each agency knows it could improve how information about the incident gets diseminated.
The most critical means of improving the stream of information will be at the hands of the school district’s technology director, Rob van Herk.
Van Herk said a computer notification system would be set up during the summer and implemented next fall.
“It’s really nothing much, and it will be really really simple,” van Herk said. “At GHS all the techonology is already in place.”
Thanks to a recent purchase of more than 230 personal computers, all middle school and elementary school classrooms also will have Internet-ready computers in September.
However, a procedure for dispersing information must be written and teacher trainings must be held, van Herk said.
The system would work, essentially, as follows: The district’s computer network would be set up so from any location a district official could update a school’s Web site and send e-mails to all teachers in their rooms.
For emergency messages, a special tone would prompt teachers to check their computers for new mail. The e-mail message and/or Web site update would inform teachers about the status of a lockdown.
“We want to set this up, test it and make sure it’s working right before next school year,” said Roger Cornia, the school district’s safety officer.
These changes in the means of dispersing accurate information come at a time when the school district and the police department are winning praises for their immediate response to a potential threat.
However, at a joint City Council and GUSD school board session Monday night, Assistant Superintendent Linda Piceno acknowledged parents and students could have been better informed on May 14.
Piceno said in addition to the new e-mail notification system, the high school could use its newly constructed electronic message board in front of campus.
“The idea is to get as many avenues of information open as possible,” Piceno said. “You can never have too much.”
Eric Leins covers city politics for The Dispatch. He can be reached at 847-7158 or by e-mail at er***@************ch.com.
