‘No guarantees’ schools are immune to violence

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- As the devastating news of another tragic school

shooting washes over the nation, parents are left wondering if their

children are safe at school.

It can happen anywhere. And while it is becoming increasingly apparent

that there are no guarantees of safety, officials in the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District on Monday assured parents they are doing

everything possible.

For Newport-Mesa, the key is prevention, Supt. Robert Barbot said.

“We do everything we can at the front end,” he said. “There’s no

guarantee in this world. It is the kind of nightmares you live with when

you live in a free society.”

On Monday morning, that nightmare unfolded at Santana High School,

just outside of San Diego, where a 15-year-old boy allegedly shot and

killed two students and wounded 13 others.

Before even considering how to handle a situation like that, Barbot

said educators must work to prevent it.

“Probably the single biggest thing we can do is listen to kids,” he

said. “When anyone makes a threat along this line, we take it very

seriously. You can’t ignore it, whether it’s in a letter or they say

they’re kidding -- the consequences are just too great.”

At Newport Harbor High School, students are closely monitored for

telltale signs, Assistant Principal Lee Gaeta said.

If students so much as doodle a picture of a gun on a notebook, he

said, they are dealt with harshly.

“We don’t let things go by us anymore,” he said. “We just can’t do

that.”

At Costa Mesa High School, they are also on constant alert, Principal

Diana Carey said.

“You need to have a school community that is open and accepting of all

kids,” she said. “Last Thursday, we had a ‘get connected’ forum, and it

was on this very topic.”

Carey mirrored Barbot’s warning that it is crucial to pay attention to

students and be there for them.

“You have to listen to the kids as adults,” she said. “You have to be

aware. As a teacher, you can tell if a student is troubled. We need to

take responsibility for kids. If I know a student is troubled, I go and

talk to them.”

But it can’t stop there, Barbot said.

“We’ve got to have, for lack of a better term, an appropriate level of

security,” he said. “There’s a fine line between too much and not enough.

If security alone was the answer, the prisons would all be safe.”

Each campus has a safe-schools emergency plan, which includes drills

for a variety of situations, said Mike Fine, the district’s assistant

superintendent.

“If it’s a case like today’s event, they would get down into the

duck-and-cover position and stay put,” Fine said. “We have maps and

photographs of all the schools.”

The district has also been doing extensive training at the Costa Mesa

schools with police SWAT teams, he said, and plans to do more in Newport

Beach.

The third crucial piece, Barbot said, is diligence.

“People have to realize that we just can’t do something and be OK,”

Barbot said. “We constantly need to be working with them, through clubs,

counseling, after-school programs, and stay with them all the time.”

Monday’s act of violence by a student has administrators more

determined than ever to reach out to students to see to it that it won’t

happen here.

“We just have to break the conspiracy of violence,” Carey said, after

hearing the ninth-grade gunman had spoken of what he was going to do over

the weekend. “Kids have to come forward. That was a cry for help. We just

have to break the code of silence.”