by Cavan Pasek
In alphabetical order, a series of threats was made to the schools of Colorado, working their way from Alamosa through Ouray and beyond. Our school district had known a call was coming: as Superintendent Tod Lokey said, “We’ve been watching this all day.”
As we knew a threat was coming, the school day continued. “If we determine it's a hoax across the state,” Mr. Lokey stated, “we're going to add security efforts and guarantee that it's a safe place to come to school and learn.”
Our local police department works closely with the school, and recommended that “we double check and tighten our door routines,” Mr. Lokey added. “They put a police officer out in a car and doubled it up for parent pickup.”
“Because it's a smaller community,” said Junior Ethan Wood, “everybody knows everybody, so, if somebody's acting off color, you know there's signs of something.” Mr. Lokey concurred. The Ouray Police Department’s “approach is, we know every car that comes by here,” he said, “so anybody that looks out of the ordinary they would talk to.”
The overwhelming majority of students didn’t know anything about the calls made to the school until a few days after the hoax. Junior MaryJane Cervone said she “learned about the hoax not until the day after.”
Freshman Keaton Nelson also “didn’t know until two days after.” Other students didn’t even know about the hoax until being interviewed. “Just now, I learned about this just now,” said senior Cason Coats, although he also added, “I don’t pay attention to the news.”
However, parents and high school students were notified. Mr. Lokey explained, “We sent out a notice to parents. Not all high schoolers read that, but it does come to them too.” Mr. Lokey was most concerned about parents being aware of the safety of the students. “If the parents know that it’s safe, there’s a hoax, and we’ve doubled security, then we’re in pretty good shape.”
But younger students did not necessarily need to know, said Mr. Lokey. Letting younger students know might cause “extra angst when that’s someone’s intent: to disrupt us.” In this situation, he added, “if a kid doesn’t know about it and they just get to focus on learning, it’s great.”
Some might be concerned about student anxiety over the threat of violence in school. Cason reflected that perhaps because of “the arrogance of me living in such a small, secluded town, I’m not really worried about [the threats] because it's not the first time schools have gotten threats.”
For the administration, it is a fine line, choosing how to prepare students for any possible situation, while not creating a focus on danger. “The media is going to determine that for us,” Mr. Lokey said, but “we don’t want to put a light on it here.” For this reason, he said, the school avoids participating in extra active shooter scenarios beyond our required lockdown drills in the school year.
With the 2016 renovation, Mr. Lokey said, “all the camera systems, all the rooms, all the communication systems,” and all the entries were upgraded, and since then the administration has “worked to really shore up our partnership with the sheriff's department and the police department, so they're present for every drill.” Still, “I hate the concept that this is the new normal for students,” he said, so we will do “anything we can do to make it not the new normal.”