The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Preventing school violence
Conference draws experts from around U.S. on fifth anniversary of Chardon High School tragedy
The Mentor School District hosted a school-violence awareness and prevention conference Feb. 27 at its Paradigm Center behind Mentor High School.
Five years to the day after lone gunman T.J. Lane walked into the Chardon High School cafeteria and opened fire with a .22 caliber pistol, fatally injuring three students and critically wounding two others, the conference, dubbed “Providing a Safe Environment for our School Children: A Layered Approach,” sought to educate various community stakeholders about school-safety related issues, legislation, school-violence prevention and victim advocacy.
Presenters included Mentor Schools Superintendent Matthew Miller, Ohio Rep. John Patterson, D-Jefferson, The Coach Hall Foundation, the CorFoundation, the Center for P-20 Safety and Security, National Association of School Resource Officers and Sandy Hook Promise.
Organized by the Coach Hall Foundation, the conference was an expansion on a smaller one held at the Chardon Schools two years ago, said Tim Armelli, president of the Coach Hall Foundation and a health/ physical education teacher at Chardon High School.
“His was the voice heard over the Chardon High School PA system immediately after the shootings... instructing students and staff to ‘lock down,’ ” his bio reads. “His actions are credited with saving many lives.”
Armelli was joined at the conference by Hall, himself, who is Coach Hall Foundation founder and chief adviser, and Andrew Fetchik, vice president of the foundation, principal of Mentor High School and Chardon High School principal when the shootings occurred there.
Hall has been lauded coast to coast and beyond, even landing a Sports Illustrated cover after chasing Lane from the school building that day, then returning to the cafeteria to render aid and comfort to the
three mortally wounded students there until medical help arrived on scene. His organization’s presentation was entitled Chardon Tragedy & Recovery.
In his presentation, Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, talked about the many roles school resource officers play in their respective districts, how they differ from police department patrol officers and what makes a good one, among other things.
“I don’t know another position in law enforcement that can make such a difference in a lot of the issues we’re dealing with today,” he said as he explained what, exactly, a school resource officer is and does.
The definition his organization has adopted is: a career law enforcement officer, with sworn authority, deployed in community oriented policing, assigned by the employing police department or agency to work in collaboration with schools.
He went on to talk about people’s perceptions of SROs, both good and bad, and explained the challenges some school districts and departments have faced over the use of SROs. He pointed to those who view law enforcement officers in schools as a means by which juveniles are funneled into the legal system and branded criminals from a young age. But that’s just not the case, he said.
“That’s the kind of skewed perception we’re dealing with,” he said after describing an interaction with a woman who asked him how he can justify having police officers in schools when the kids are watching police murder their classmates on television almost every day.
Another poignant presentation came by way of Sandy Hook Promise, an advocacy group founded around the deadly shooting spree Dec. 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between 6 and 7 years old, along with six adult staff members.
The father of then-7year-old Daniel, who was one of the 20 young victims, the organization’s managing director Mark Barden, along with its national field director Paula
''I would do anything to go back and be able to rewrite history. But I can’t and that’s why we have to work to ensure this never happens again.” — Mark Barden, father of Sandy Hook victim
Fynboh and Lauren Alfred, its policy and partnership director, talked about a broad range of topics related to what they all see as a preventable tragedy, offering information and statistics about identifying students who may be at risk of harming themselves or others, among other information.
“I would do anything to go back and be able to rewrite history,” Barden said to the group of about 100 in attendance Feb. 27. “But I can’t and that’s why we have to work to ensure this never happens again.”
He talked about having to explain to his then-15year-old daughter, Natalie, and then-16-year-old son, James, what happened and how to make sense of it all.
“I wouldn’t wish any of this pain on anybody,” he said. “This is preventable and it’s not going to fix itself. We have to be part of the equation.”
He added that, “at the end of the day, our mission is to prevent that from happening again.”