Arapahoe shooting renews scrutiny

Family involvement has been a big focus since Columbine.

She tried to get her son help. When investigators combed through Barbara Pierson’s computer after the tragedy, they found several e-mails about his anger problems, including one pleading with a school psychologist for a plan.

She brought her troubled 18-yearold son, Karl, to a mental health center that determined he was not a threat to himself or others.

Barbara Pierson also received a text message from her son saying he had withdrawn $800 from the bank “to give a friend for flying lessons.” She told him to put it back. By then, Karl already had legally purchased a pump-action shotgun hewould use to shoot up his school.

Those details, made public Friday in the investigation into December’s Arapahoe High School shooting, provide just shreds of insight into the relationship between an 18-year-old who called himself a “psychopath with a superiority complex” and the parent he lived with.

Few factors are as influential as family in the development of a young person. Whena tragic event occurs, questions invariably arise about the upbringing of the person responsible and what parents did or didn’t do, and what other factors might have contributed.

In Colorado, parental involvement in assessing threats— and more broadly in public education — has been paramount since the Columbine High School shooting of 1999.

But not all requirements put in place in recent years are being followed, and laws lack teeth to hold school districts accountable.

When a young person carries out a terrible act, the inclination is to automatically blame the parents, said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University and author of “Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence.”

Family dysfunction is a commonthread in youth violence, he said, with exposure to domestic violence, abuse and hostile or absent parenting contributing to the developing brain or causing young people to model what they see.

But good parenting cannot prevent violence or isolatedmass shootings, which often involve the combination of mental illness and access to weapons, he said.

Schools are better off promoting parental involvement broadly because it can be so hard to predict who might act out, Steinberg said.

“There are just too many false positives,” he said. “So in some sense, you are better off targeting the whole school community.”

The parents of DylanKlebold, one of the twoColumbine High School killers, described their son to an author as a curious, selfmotivated and organized young childwho liked mazes, word searches and chess.

In the 2012 book “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity,” by Andrew Solomon, theKlebolds are quoted as saying little prepared them for April 20, 1999.

“If I could say something to a roomful of parents right now, I would say, ‘Never trust what you see,’ ” Sue Klebold said. “Was he nice? Was he thoughtful? I was taking a walk not long before he died, and I’d asked him, ‘Come and pick me up if it rains.’ And he did. He was there for you, and he was the best listener I ever met. I realize now that that was because he didn’t want to talk, and he was hiding.”

Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was murdered at Columbine, said parents play a critical role in shaping their children, but he recognizes it’s “asking a lot” when serious mental illness is involved.

“Aparent has to be very involved to know what’s happening,” Mauser said. “If you’re not eating dinner together, you’re off to a very bad start. You can’t be reluctant to go into their room and see what’s going on. It might be perceived as micromanaging, but it’s better to do that than to miss a sign.”

AfterColumbine, Mauser said, he wrote to the parents of gunmen Eric Harris and Klebold to share his disappointment in their silence.

Mauser said he wishes parents of the perpetrators of the shootings atArapahoe High School and the Aurora theater would speak about how they would have raised their children differently.

“People are so afraid of lawsuits that they say, ‘Don’t say anything,’ ” Mauser said.

The report released Friday by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’sOffice examines the circumstances that led Pierson to stalk into his school Dec. 13 with a shotgun and ammunition strapped to his chest, fatally shooting fellow senior Claire Davis before killing himself.

One key moment took place Sept. 3, when, after a tense meeting with school officials and his mother, Karl yelled to his mother in the school parking lot, “I’m going to kill thatMurphy!”

Pierson held a grudge against debate coach Tracy Murphy, who had stripped him of his debate team captaincy over poor behavior.

After the threat, Pierson and his parents met with school officials. Threat-assessment documents show Pierson was to see a psychologist weekly and work on anger management. Paperwork from the meeting read, “Mom reports deepseeded anger & Karl agrees that he’s had anger mgmt is- sues for a while.”

The school’s threat assessment determined Pierson was a “lowlevel of concern.”

In a diary laying out his plans, Pierson wrote that the medication he was taking — commonly used to treat depression — did nothing. He also wrote that he “lied through his teeth” during a psychiatric evaluation his mother arranged.

Barbara Pierson also asked the school for an individualized education plan for her son, and shewas told he would need a learning disability to qualify, but it could be discussed further.

The Piersons divorced when Karl was a junior in high school; one classmate told investigators he seemed to get angry after that.

TheDenverPost could not reach Barbara Pierson for comment, andMarkPierson declined to comment.

In the aftermath of the shooting, some parents have accused the Littleton School District of keeping parents at arm’s length.

“We are told on Back to School Night, ‘It’s time to let your kids be in high school and try to pull away from them,’ ” said Vicki Hoffmann, whose daughter graduated in May. “I get that. But that is the kind of message they send. I think they want the parents to be involved in PTO or fundraising or to support their kids at sporting events.”

School district officials have refused to discuss their handling of the shooting.

EdwardMulvey, a professor of psychiatry at theUniversity of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who has studied youth violence, said schools and the juvenile justice system must do better to create an environment that encourages parents to come forward with concerns.

Too often, he said, parents feel they are contacted after a decision has been made, or tocheck a requirement off a list.

“Parents are not going to come to the school and tell them something’s wrong if they walk in the door and are turned into the problem,” Mulvey said.

“Systems are all overloaded,” he said. “But in the end, they are kind of defeating themselves not systemically involving the parents early on.”

When a student makes a credible threat in Denver Public Schools, the district convenes a “connect the dots” meeting that can include teachers, school psychologists, counselors and parents, said EldridgeGreer, director of DPS’s Office of Social and Emotional Learning.

Greer said district officials approach parents carefully, using nonaccusatory language, stressing that no conclusions have been reached and watching for cues a parentmay be feeling defensive or threatened.

“We want the parent at the table,” he said. “Not in an antagonisticway, but as a partner because the parent really knows the child best out of all the individuals at the table.”

Parental involvement has been an emphasis for state legislators searching for answers after Columbine and subsequent tragedies.

Since 2008, the Colorado School Safety Resource Center, part of the stateDepartment of Public Safety, has served as a central hub of threat-assessment training for school districts. Part of that includes parent workshops.

On a broader scale, legislators in 2009 created the State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Edu- cation to review best practices and recommend ways to increase parental involvement in education.

All Colorado school districts are required by state law to have family engagement policies. That is in addition to a similar federal mandate for schools that receiveTitle I funding for disadvantaged students.

In 2013, state legislators added a new mandate, requiring that school districts designate a point person to serve as a liaison on parental involvement with the state Department of Education.

But so far, onlyabout 85 of Colorado’s 178 public school districts have done so, said DarcyHutchins, the department’s family partnership director, a new position created last year. There are no consequences in the law for districts that fail to comply, she said.

Districts do not need to create a new position but simply designate someone on staff to fill the role, which is supposed to make it easier for the state to alert districts to free training opportunities, Hutchins said.

“There are a lot of demands on school districts right now,” she said, citing more rigorous state assessments coming this spring and newteacher-evaluation systems tied to student academic growth. “Traditionally, family partnerships is seen as something that takes a back seat, as opposed to something that can support all the other initiatives on this long to-do list. Schools just see it as one more thing to do, and they’re tapped out and it’s seen as a competing demand.”