School’s out in CCSD
Last day of classes takes place without incident; parents, students breathe sigh of relief
The final bell rang out Wednesday morning at Silverado High School marking the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation.
Many children quickly left campus to celebrate a break from the rigors of attending daily classes. Parents had a different emotion: They let out a sigh of relief that the last day went off without a school shooting.
“They were both nervous,” said Dara Fernandez, a mom waiting outside of Silverado waiting to pick up her freshman and sophomore children. “My son texted me three times today saying he wanted to go home.”
Fernandez was one of many Clark County School District parents waiting on pins and needles Wednesday, a day after a mass shooting at an elementary school left 19 children and two teachers dead with 17 more wounded in Uvalde, Texas. Fernandez was one of several parents and students who told the
Sun they were worried a similar shooting would transpire on the last day of classes Wednesday.
“I’m terrified every day for my kids,” she said. “It’s horrible that as a country ruled by old, white men that guns have more rights than our young people. And that’s basically what that is. We can protect you and we’re going to keep you in the womb no matter what anybody else thinks. But once you’re out, we’re gonna teach you how to have a hard lockdown and you’re on your own.”
Authorities said that Salvador Ramos, 18, used an Ar-15-style semi-automatic rifle Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde that ended with police storming a classroom and killing him. He had legally bought two such rifles just days before, soon after his birthday, authorities said.
Texas Department of Public Safety officials said all of those killed were in the same fourth-grade classroom at the school.
The mass shooting — the worst at a school in the U.S. in more than a decade — had parents across the nation on edge Wednesday.
In Las Vegas, Cecilia Mckenzie jumped when she heard a loud pop as she was pick
ing up her daughter from Nate Mack Elementary School. It was a balloon.
Obviously, Uvalde was on her mind. And while she was in a cheery mood as she walked home with her newly promoted preschooler, Mckenzie said she was “glad that today’s the last day.”
Teachers and other staffers at Nate Mack stationed at gates in the fence wrapping around the Green Valley-area school, efficiently seeing kids into parents’ arms and to the crossing guard. Adults don’t walk far into the grounds to fetch their kids — the usual closed-campus procedure, one staffer said.
Parents thought long and hard about sending the children to school, said Nereida Garcia, who was picking up her sophomore daughter from Silverado. Ultimately, Garcia allowed her teenager to attend to celebrate the last day with her classmates, but they texted back-and-forth throughout the shortened day with Garcia
assuring the girl she would pick her if she felt uneasy.
But even before the tragedy in Uvalde, a town of about 16,000, a potential school shooting is always on the younger Garcia’s mind, Garcia said.
“One thing she says she doesn’t like is the children wearing slides,” Garcia said, referring to the flip flop style of shoes. “Because (if a shooting happened), they can’t run. It really bothers her.”
Debbie Linge of Boulder City was parked in her SUV near Silverado’s parking lot off of Spencer Street waiting to pick up her freshman granddaughter. For Linge, Tuesday’s massacre in Texas was a stark reminder that such shootings can happen anywhere.
“We’re a town of 15,000,” Linge said of Boulder City. “That could have happened at Andrew J. Mitchell (Elementary School). That’s where my kids went.
“I look at these schools and I think, are we down to the point where we really should have some big gates, you know, like how they do in prison?”
Still, as many advocate for stricter access to assault-style firearms, Linge says such barriers won’t stop folks who will try to commit mass shootings.
“If they did take our guns away, the people who want to do bad things are going to find a way,” Linge said.
Others say CCSD provides more than adequate protection from would-be intruders. Kawawen Jenkins said he felt comfortable sending his two boys for their last day. He has a friend who’s an officer for the Clark County School District Police.
“I have a lot of confidence in our school police,” he said, one hand full of papers, doodles and other last-day-of-school goodies. The boys, a second-grader and a kindergartner at Nate Mack, are too young to understand what happened, he said.
Jason Love, a sophomore at Silverado, said he felt safe on campus but active-shooter drills do little to give peace of mind. That’s especially true now, he said, in an era when most schoolage shooters have gone through the drills as well.
“I heard that the person who did the shooting was 18,” Love said. “So they know all the drills, like, they were doing it themselves … but I think everything on-campus is fine. I think we need to investigate more of what happens online. Because, a lot of the time, the people who are doing these things are venting online about it.”
Delanie Wilson, a Silverado freshman, had a more simple solution: “I don’t know about (security) in schools, but I think they should just, like, ban all guns.”
That would require sweeping reform at the federal level that would likely stall in an evenly divided Congress. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,
D-N.Y., plans to bring bills already approved by the House of Representatives expanding background checks and extending waiting periods to buy guns to a vote soon.
With a 50-50 Democratic-republican split in the Senate, the bills are unlikely to overcome a filibuster, which would require 60 votes to bring the bills to a final vote.
Fernandez, one of the parents waiting to pick up their high-schoolers at Silverado, said she had lost faith that elected officials would take adequate action to prevent another mass shooting.
“What do you do? Live in fear every single day? As a country, that’s how we’re living,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.