A year after Richneck
As region marks school shooting anniversary, more help needed for teachers
Saturday marks one year since a shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News shook that community and the wider Hampton Roads region. As it escalated to national attention, a 6-year-old child shooting his first-grade teacher became emblematic of our country’s obsession with guns, a society in which such tragedies are sadly commonplace.
What the Richneck shooting revealed was more nuanced. Yes, there’s a need for gun control measures that keep firearms locked away in homes with children, but it also illuminated the desperation of teachers trying to keep order in their classrooms and the duty of school administrators to provide more help.
A year later, the commonwealth has made some progress, but still has miles to go. Lawmakers convening in Richmond next week for the General Assembly have an opportunity to answer the questions raised by the Richneck shooting — and must seize it.
Any report of an active shooter in a school turns the stomach. Those connected with the school fear for the safety of their children, the teachers and staff, while those outside can’t help but share in the anguish. It’s a horror we experience too often in this country.
But the Richneck shooting was different in notable ways that became abundantly clear as law enforcement and officials provided details. The shooter was a 6-year-old, not an individual capable of making rational decisions. And the victim was first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner, 25, who suffered life-threatening wounds
from the single gunshot.
In April, Zwerner filed a $40 million lawsuit against the Newport News School Board, the superintendent and Richneck’s principal and assistant principal that outlined a litany of mistakes in how school administrators handled the child leading up to the Jan. 6 shooting.
It alleged that complaints about the child’s behavioral issues were not properly addressed, including two days prior to the shooting when he smashed Zwerner’s
phone in class, and that Assistant Principal Ebony Parker ignored three separate warnings that the child had a gun at school on the day he shot Zwerner.
Attorneys for the School Board argued that the lawsuit should be handled through workplace compensation, since what she suffered was a “workplace injury.” That line of defense drew the ire of area educators, who were aghast that anyone could think being shot in the classroom was a hazard of the job, and did not impress the Newport News Circuit Court judge, who ruled in November that Zwerner’s suit could proceed.
For many teachers, the lawsuit and the school board’s defense was a perfect illustration of the problem in schools — that educators were doing their best to handle unruly students, but that administrators were of little help, leaving those in the front of the classroom to fend for themselves, whatever “workplace injuries” may come.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s “All in VA” plan to address chronic absenteeism and learning loss through a statewide tutoring program may help, as it will provide targeted assistance to students struggling to keep up (and who are most likely to be unruly as a result). But it’s one small piece of a larger puzzle.
Virginia lawmakers can do their part this year by investing in programs and initiatives that provide more mental health resources and support staff for public schools. They can boost teacher pay so it’s closer to the national average and expand the Youngkin administration’s efforts to reduce absenteeism and learning loss.
The commonwealth must also accelerate efforts to meet federal requirements for special education programs, including Individualized Education Plans. State officials were warned last year that a failure to do so would result in a loss of funding.
Yes, Virginia should require that guns be locked in homes with children, but the issues given a spotlight by this tragedy require more than that. Virginia educators must have the help they need in the classroom, and it’s past time to provide it.