 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
How schools 'locked down' in response to shootings Mt. Lebanon police says district performed well on Friday Tuesday, May 02, 2000 By Laura Pace, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Mt. Lebanon school administrators will meet Thursday to discuss how their emergency lockdown procedures worked during last Friday's shooting rampage through the South Hills and to determine if procedures need to be revised.
For complete Post-Gazette coverage, click here.
Mt. Lebanon Deputy Police Chief Henry Egal said the schools properly executed their emergency plans. "They did great. They did not release anybody before they were called" by police and told to do so, he said.
The school lockdowns began after police at the Elmspring Road and Scott Towne Center crime scenes realized the suspect, Richard S. Baumhammers of Mt. Lebanon, was on the run, Egal said.
Yesterday, students and their parents had vivid accounts about the lockdown and the events preceding it.
Mary Ann Schneider, who has a son at Jefferson Middle School in Mt. Lebanon, had just ordered lunch at Tomatoes restaurant in Scott Towne Center when she heard three loud bangs, with screams after each.
Someone in the restaurant went to the window and yelled, "Call 911! Somebody's been shot!" Schneider called police on her cell phone from the ladies' room and diners and employees learned that two men had been shot at India Grocers, next door.
When the gunman was gone, Schneider drove to the school to retrieve her son. School officials had just learned of the emergency and were locking down 10 schools as police searched for the suspect. Dismissal was to begin in about 10 minutes in a district where most of the 5,726 students walk to school.
Kate Ubinger's teacher locked the classroom door, drew the window shades and began to empty a supply closet in case the class needed to hide.
"I think [the district] did the best they could under the circumstances," said Kate's mother, Joanne, although she believes the middle school students should have been told more.
"There are some things I would do differently, but they protected the children and that was most important."
Other parents said their children were told there had been a car crash or simply a "community emergency."
Accurate information was scarce, Mt. Lebanon administrators agreed.
"No one knew what was going on," said Superintendent Glenn Smartschan. He said the South Hills Regional Dispatch Center called him and the building principals at 2:50 p.m.
By then, as it turned out, the suspect had left the area and moved west toward Robinson and Beaver County, where more shootings occurred.
Parents may think school officials have direct means of getting information from police during a crisis, but they don't, said Carl DeJulio, superintendent of Keystone Oaks School District. Keystone Oaks high school and middle school, located in Mt. Lebanon, also were locked down.
The South Hills Regional Dispatch Center and the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department called schools starting with Jefferson Elementary, Jefferson Middle School and Mt. Lebanon High School, because of their proximity to the suspect's home, Egal said. Students at St. Bernard's School on Washington Road had already been dismissed, said school secretary Kathy Sikora.
The Southminster Child Care Center on Washington Road didn't get a call but followed neighboring Mellon Middle School's lead and locked down from 2:50 to 3:30 p.m., said Director Alice Adams.
Chartiers Valley schools had a 12-minute lockdown until just after 3 p.m., except at the high school, where students already had been dismissed. Sts. Simon and Jude School on Greentree Road in Scott also was locked down.
At Mt. Lebanon public schools, where a lockdown procedure was instituted at the beginning of the 1999-2000 school year, principals announced the emergency code words over the intercom:
"All teachers and principals bring their grade books to the office at the end of the day."
The code will be changed, Smartschan noted.
The teachers then knew to lock classroom doors, keep students inside, shut windows and draw shades. They were to tell students there was a community emergency and that they would be staying there until further notice.
But, Smartschan said, variations on the protocol can happen with a staff of 409 people.
Corey Polena, juvenile protection officer of Mt. Lebanon's Parent-Teacher Organization, said her children's teachers explained the situation differently to each age group. Her 9-year-old Jefferson Elementary student and her 14-year-old Jefferson Middle School student were told there was "a situation and they were taking precautions" but teachers were more specific with her high school student.
Some students used cell phones to get more details and contact parents, Egal said.
Children should be given general information during an emergency as long as it is true, but they don't need too many details, said Alice Mahler, director of community services of the Parent and Child Guidance Center, an affiliate of Family Links, on Banksville Road.
Children need to know they are safe and that adults such as teachers and principals are in control. "What you don't want to do is give misinformation," she said.
Police confirmed the suspect was in custody at 3:23 p.m. and the dispatch center called schools to release students. The 220 students at Keystone Oaks' Aiken Elementary School were not released until about 4:15 p.m. because they were waiting for buses to drop off middle and high school students.
Smartschan said Monday's Mt. Lebanon attendance was normal. Teachers and principals were asked to watch for anxious students.
Keystone Oaks wrote its lockdown plan about two years ago, in response to growing reports of school violence. "If this would have happened four or five years ago, I don't know if we would have been as prepared," DeJulio said.
Carole Gilbert Brown of Tri-State Sports & News Service contributed to this report.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
