Imagine overhearing your middle school daughter, talking to a friend on the phone, say, “You’re not going to shoot up the school, are you? This is crazy.”
Would you keep trying to fall asleep, assuming it was just silly kid talk? Or would you get up and talk to your daughter?
A Clinton father of a middle school girl faced that situation in the wee hours between Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 11. Robert Baumgarten chose to get up and talk to his daughter, who told him all about her conversation, he told Clinton residents gathered for a community forum on the evening of April 22 in the Clinton High School theater.
And then he chose to call in law enforcement rather than dismissing the conversation and going to sleep, he said.
No one will ever know how many lives that call might have saved. The audience gave Baumgarten a standing ovation.
The Oneida County Sheriff’s Office got that call at about 1:42 a.m. April 11 and began an investigation that resulted in the uncovering of a plan for a potential mass shooting in the middle school cafeteria on Friday, April 17, the arrests of two girls aged 13 and 14, and a boy aged 13, and the seizure of 11 firearms, all legally licensed and secured, from the boy’s home.
Maciol also said it was the most serious school threat he’s encountered during his career.
Earlier in the evening, parent Mohagany Green, the women’s basketball coach at Hamilton College, had expressed concern for the teens arrested.
“I pray for all the young people involved in this and I hope they’re getting all the help they need,” she said.
She then gave kudos to district administration and county officials gathered on stage for the forum, and to district teachers, expressing how glad she is that her two children get to attend the district.
And she expressed her thanks to the girl who told her father about the threat and to the father for taking it seriously. “I mean, God bless you,” Green said to loud applause.
For the forum, about a dozen school district officials and Oneida County officials involved in some part of the case sat on stage to answer questions when they could. But the point of the forum wasn’t for officials to release more information, Superintendent Christopher Clancy said.
“This is an opportunity for us to listen to you and for you to speak,” he told the audience, inviting anyone who wanted to make a comment or ask a question to stop forward to two microphones in the audience.
The audience asked some questions about the events of the previous week and questions about how the district will prevent similar situations in the future. They asked about what can be done to identify and help troubled students earlier.
And they expressed gratitude to everyone who’d contributed to the violence-free outcome and to everyone who’s supported students, families, teachers and staff throughout the experience.
Some of the questions involved tighter security in the schools, such as security doors on classrooms and metal detectors at entrances; how to tackle bullying more effectively; how the community can support teachers; why all middle school lockers weren’t searched; and why the teens haven’t been charged as adults.
Here’s how the district did and will respond, Clancy told the audience:
A lot has happened in a short period of time, Clancy said.
“And there’s a lot,” he added, “that we still need to do.”
In response to a question from the audience about social/emotional/behavioral screenings, Clancy said that the district has secondary students fill out a risk assessment survey every year and that teachers fill out the same survey for elementary students. It’s a “powerful” tool that helps uncover trauma, personal conflicts and family issues, he said.
Maciol also shared some new information and some “critical” information that he wanted to emphasize during the forum:
One audience member said that plans are in the works for a community gathering on the Village Green from 4 to 6 p.m. May 7, which is the National Day of Prayer. She suggested it as a good prescription for everyone’s mental health.
Clancy said he will take everyone’s comments and questions and put them together into a document that he will send out, hopefully by the end of the week.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Emotions, explanations revealed during Clinton school forum
Reporting by Amy Neff Roth, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch
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