Student dies from self-inflicted gunshot in Valley Forge High School cafeteria

A friend teaches at Valley Forge.  He called me a couple of hours later to tell me what happened and about the student.  That’s not my story to tell, and the inside scoop is probably all over social media.

The student shot herself at the end of the school day in the cafeteria.  The corporate media is settling into a suicide narrative, but this student sums it up.

“I’m terrified, and I’m honestly shocked,” student Layla Diperna said during an interview with her mother. “As soon as I heard that, we both started breaking down crying because she could have shot up the school; many children could have been hurt, that is my biggest fear, and I know a lot of other students’ biggest fear.

She’s right.  A student brought a gun to school, and used it.

“Many of them said that … every officer you can imagine came in the building, rushing in with guns drawn … yelling at everybody ‘get out, get out,'” Diperna and her mom said. “Basically terrifying for all the students there.”

My friend had described the chaotic evacuation of the building. 

Schools have fire drills for orderly evacuation, stay-put drills when there is something in the hallways that students shouldn’t see, and lock-down drills when there is an active shooter. There is a PA system, phones in the classroom, all-staff group text for Snow Days and a ‘Safety and Emergency’ phone app.

None of that was used.  When events are happening fast, decisions have to made with incomplete information by people who are unprepared.  

At North Royalton, I asked an administrator if we’d ever had a fire drill during a lunch period.  He said, “No, there’d be pandemonium.”

To someone serious about student safety, that is exactly why there should be a fire drill during lunch.  Once the vulnerability is identified, it should be addressed.

Since then, I asked that question of every administrator.  They all had the same response, but promised to rectify the policy.   That was fifteen years go, and although there is a fire drill every month, there hasn’t been one during a lunch period.

Contractually, each teacher was assigned a daily, non-teaching, 20 minute administrative duty.  One year, I was assigned main hallway duty.  My job was to direct people coming into the building.  Adults to the main office, and students to the attendance clerk.

An assistant principal asked me what I would do if a person came in from the parking lot with a firearm.  It was a casual conversation with a friendly administrator.  I said that I’d send them to check in with Cheryl.  She was our attendance clerk.

Over the course of that year, the other three administrators asked me the same thing.  After the first conversation, I stopped kidding around and gave a more substantive answer.

I regret that I didn’t ask more questions about why they were asking questions.  I assumed that they did not have an answer for someone coming in with a firearm, and were looking for ideas.  There could have been some other reason.  I don’t know.

When extraordinary events are happening, people instinctively interpret events as being ordinary.

I know I do.  After my friend told me about the shooting, we talked about it a bit, then moved on to other topics.  We brush it off.