The number of attendees was smaller but the voices were mighty at the school board meeting on Thursday evening. Parents expressed anger about the administration’s poor communication and dismay that schools were not closed while a student who threatened to “shoot up the school” was still on the loose.
“I got a lot more information from my 13 year old than I did from anybody else, which is pretty frightening because, shouldn’t parents be the first to know? Not the child? Not the child telling the parents what is going on?” Aspen Stanton told the school board. She said she saw police cars in the parking lot on the morning of March 11 but only received an email explaining the situation after she dropped off her child at school.
”We get more information for a snow day than we did for a potential school shooting,” she added. “There needs to be more effort put into it. Don’t bury our heads in the sand- oh we’re a small town, it’s never going to happen here. It can happen anywhere, and we as parents need more clarity to protect our children. None of these children should have gone to school that day. None of them. The child that threatened wasn’t apprehended yet. That’s my view.”
Meghan Kiefer, who has four children in the school district, said parents are relying on rumor and word of mouth for information weeks later. She expressed concern about her child’s sixth grade class, whose teacher was named as a target.
“I don’t feel I am getting the information I need about what the plan is for this child and whether they’re going to be invited on campus and what steps you all are going to take,” she said. “I want to leave these decisions to experts, but I need to know what those decisions are.”
Two speakers into public comment, School Board Director Judith Hardmeyer-Wright, filling in for School Board Chair Dana Stromberger, who connected to the meeting by telephone, realized the board had forgotten to read their mission statement.
Superintendent Tom Venable offered to read it. After he read the last line, “Every student shines,” Hardmeyer-Wright added, “And they do,” before resuming public comments from parents angry about the administration’s handling of the situation.
Another parent, who has a child at LBHS and ILC, said she learned about the incident days later from ILC. She inquired if the school would hire a resource officer that could reach out to students .
“You guys were leaving the bus driver to be the first point of contact. The second point of contact was all these elementary school, little kids,” she said.
“There was not enough communication from the school district to the parents and you have a lot of very, very upset parents to deal with,” she added. “It seems to us you’re just trying to sweep it under the rug, and we’re not going to allow that…. You guys need to do better.”
Parents asked how someone with 47 referrals and 33 filed complaints could continue to attend school without required counseling. Venable said referrals could be for anything, including a cell phone violation, without going into specifics about the alleged perpetrator.
“The number itself isn’t the issue at hand. It’s more about the pattern of behavior,” he said.
Alexis Port, who has three children in the school district and whose nephew was threatened by the alleged perpetrator, said, “The scary thing is we let it get to this point with this kid. I guess my question for the school district is, ‘what are we doing differently?’ Because the way we handled it, there were multiple things that went wrong.”
Port said the alleged perpetrator made personal threats to her nephew a year ago without consequence and later made threats to other children. Port said it is a policy flaw that the student wasn’t required to get help to stay enrolled in the school district. Port said the administration didn’t protect all kids by protecting the perpetrator.
“I get that you’re trying to protect him or keep him here and keep him in school and give him an education, but that’s not fair to everyone else’s kids,” she said.
Port requested a review of all bullying situations on file with the school district.
“It’s a continued bullying issue in our school, it’s the school not following through with threats with bullying and not having a solid policy that’s protecting everyone. I really hope this incident, if we get anything out of it, it’s to change what we can so it never happens again,” she said.
The school board was scheduled to review their discipline policy that evening, but it was postponed because laws have been amended, which means policies and procedures also need to be amended, said Venable.
He told parents that both MVE and LBHS principals attended a training earlier in the week by the law firm Stevens Clay, which suggested updated policies and procedures for the school. The school board will need to review and approve those policies.
“We’ll be working with Stevens Clay to help us understand how to best implement those updated polices and procedures that provide clear guidance, definition and provide a range of responses,” said Venable. He added that there is some subjectivity in applying a policy because referrals may be for different behavioral issues.
“We share your concerns,” said Venable, while affirming the student’s right to confidentiality.
Venable said the student who made the threats remains in custody (as of Thursday evening) and MVSD will be notified when he is released. Law enforcement will not be notified, per earlier statements by Okanogan County Sheriff Paul Budrow.
Without citing specifics about this particular student, Venable talked in general terms about the conditions under which he could be released. This includes posting bail, confirmation that weapons have been removed from the household, student’s participation in a psychiatric evaluation and risk assessment, requiring the student to be supervised 24/7 by a parent, and restricting the student to one of four places: at home, at parents place of work, in court, or at a doctor’s office.
The student may be required to wear an electronic monitoring device that would alert law enforcement if the student is not in one of these four places. Venable said law enforcement would respond immediately.
The school’s disciplinary policy for a threat of intent to harm involving a weapon is emergency expulsion followed by an investigation. If there is a “preponderance of evidence suggesting a credible threat, then it is moved to an expulsion,” said Venable.
If the disciplinary action is taken before a student withdraws from the school district, it remains in effect. In this case, the LBHS principal issued an emergency expusion before the student was taken into custody and transferred to the Okanogan School District.
“When it’s in the form of expulsion, that disciplinary action is for the length of an academic term and it may be extended. During that period, there’s a no trespass order that remains in effect restricting the student from accessing the school campus,” said Venable.
It would include all school sites, including ILC, and also prohibit the student from accessing school transportation and school-sponsored activities. Failure to comply would result in arrest. The student would access education remotely.
“If student and parent do not comply, the student can be placed back into custody of courts and juvenile detention center,” said Venable.
Venable addressed concerns about the student’s threats to staff.
“When a staff member is named, then we support them in obtatining a civil protection order which further provides protection for that individual but doesn’t necessarily supersede all the protections that have been put forth in support of the school campus, students and staff in general.”
“We can do better in terms of the communication,” said Venable. “The very protocols that we have for weather-related events are the same protocols that we should have used for notifying families.”
Parents engaged with the superintendent outside the public comment period, saying all schools should have been shut down because the student wasn’t yet apprehended. Parents noted the child had bullied and threatened kids in MVE, whose building wasn’t protected.
“You put every single elementary kid and Head Start kid in this school and teacher at risk by not having school that day. There was just no excuse- a risk that should never have been taken, in my opinion,” said Port.
Another parent called for action plans for shooting scenarios. “Why is that not here in our school?”
Nicola Zahn asked for a community meeting outside of the school board meeting. Venable responded, “I will take your recommendation under consideration.” He said he hasn’t had time to do a full scale debrief because he is “still moving through the process.”
“I’ve been trying to find the time and space to say yes, please know that we’re listening, we hear you, we hear your concerns,” said Venable. “At the end of the day, all of us have kids in our schools and we care deeply, just like you do and we can be better and we can use this opportunity to do just that.”
Port commended Venable and said parents need to hear from him.
“Parents are scared, and they should be,” she said.
School Board Director Boo Schneider thanked parents for coming and said, “We all learn from hearing people’s voices and it takes courage to speak up.”
