| 0:04:51 | How the lockdown began | Herrington sets out his method first — "I'll go through as it happened to me, and I'll go through the things that we found out" — then: "on the afternoon of February 11th, I got a phone call from the River Valley Tech School, the assistant director there. And for, importance to the story. Also my wife. She called me and said, I have a report that a student may have a gun in Stevens High School." He put the school in lockdown while still on the phone, asking assistant principal Paige Jarvis to make the call; then, over the line, "I just hear her go, oh, God, that's a gun." | POSITIVE |
| 0:06:56 | 911 and the police response | "There's probably about five seconds between hanging up the phone and calling 901 [911]… before I could get off the phone and do everything, I had a police officer running through the door saying, get off the phone." He puts the response at "less than a minute" and the whole lockdown at "about 40 minutes… Between the lockdown and when it was released." | |
| 0:07:57 | Entry, detentions, and the BB gun | "About 10 or 15 police, my guess, came through with loaded weapons. Bulletproof shields, the whole nine yards and kind of swept through our school. They detained one student in a hallway. They found three more in the bathroom. In the bathroom with them was a, what was later found to be a BB gun. I saw that BB gun." And: "I've been around guns most of my life. Just from being four feet away, I could not tell the difference." Four students in total; camera review showed they had been out of class "for about 30 or 40 minutes before the lockdown started." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:10:06 | Sticky notes on a camera; a deleted video | "There were incidents where, one of the students were putting sticky notes on doors… And when they tried to hide in a bathroom, they jumped up and tried to put a sticky note on that camera." Then: "the assistant tech director went back to video it on her phone, and that video was gone. All right. Deleted." Herrington's reading: "once the lockdown happened, these students knew why and then went back to try and kind of, you know, delete their tracks." | |
| 0:11:41 | "it's frustrating when people in the community say, I was BB gun" | "A lot of the lot of the students have come up to me and said, you know, it's frustrating when people in the community say, I was BB gun. That wasn't real. Because at that time we didn't know what was being on and the actions from the police officers." He adds that for the students in the building it was indistinguishable from "a loaded gun. And that's what our students had to deal with. And that is what they're still dealing with and we probably deal with for quite some time." | |
| 0:12:30 | Two offices did not hear the lockdown | "Every room, every door. We found some errors in our, to system. There's least two offices with people in them that did not hear the lockdown and were just busted in by police with guns. You know, and we had been working on fix That." At the end of the day the school was gathered in the auditorium and told what had happened. | POSITIVE |
| 0:13:22 | Response time; the limits of what the district can decide alone | Pratt: "the response time from Plymouth [Claremont] City PD and all the surrounding areas was incredible because, like Doctor Harrington said, he was still on the phone when police were already entering the building." Then a frame he returns to all night: "We can go as far as we, we want with security, but we have to know what the what the city and what the community, they want us to go and not go, we can't do this alone." | |
| 0:15:52 | What a principal's safety day looks like | Lewis (Disnard): "from the moment that we enter the building, we're always watching. We're always looking. Do we see doors that are proud [propped]?… Do we see something that doesn't belong?" — and on drills with the youngest children, "it's a little bit different because it's a whole lot scarier when you're five." Blount (Maple Avenue): "we do these on a monthly basis, we are required by the state to do at least two lockdowns a year and two fire drills each year. And I would say we always learn something after every single drill." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:19:36 | Romeo: safety is not one person's job | "the biggest challenge is trying to make sure everybody understands that it's not just my responsibility, but we are all part of the safety of our school… I should be checking doors, but if you see a door, you should report it." On money: "it's just making sure that you continuously fight for and ask for the things that you need. And whether it's, it's in the budget or not. If we need it, we need it. Right. So we need to figure out is there a grant?" | |
| 0:21:21 | What changed after February 11 — and after the fall threat | Pratt: "we try to learn every time we have a drill. Every time that we have an incident like we had last month. As you recall, you know, we had a scare the beginning of the school year where there was an online threatening." Concrete items: stairwell floor numbering ("you can't really see the numbers with it once the doors are closed"), exterior lockdown strobes "on the exterior of the building in each ministry [entry]", emergency lockdown switches in administrative offices, and cross-building radios — "We do radio checks at least 3 or 4 times a week to make sure they're online." | POSITIVE |
| 0:23:53 | Cameras and door hardware | A panel member (voice not identifiable in the merged audio cluster): "We applied for a grant, and we were able to add, a bunch more security cameras. We had a lot of blind spots. Before this incident even happened." And: "He's added locks for the doors. For keep [keypad] of entry. So the doors, exterior doors are always locked." Pratt on the single controlled entry point at the central office: "some people thought it was overkill, but I think that was the entry point… I'd rather be proactive than reactive." | POSITIVE |
| 0:26:06 | How a bullying report is handled | Herrington: "bullying, harassment or legal terms to every, you know, to lawyers… They're not legal terms to children. So a lot of the times when you say that, you know, I've been being bullied, we have to sit down and go through it… regardless, we're going to be addressing it. It just depends on how we are going to address it." The mechanism: a student statement sheet — "a Google form where they can write down everything that they had, that that's happened, who's involved, what time, where it goes, and it sends a notification to all the administrators." Pratt adds the distinction the district works from: "Harassment is a protected category. Bullying is just ongoing." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:30:46 | The behavior matrix | Pratt: "we put the behavior matrix in place, especially for the middle and high school to be as a like as possible. But that's something we look at at the end of each year, because that matrix is only going to work based on the current student population, should be a very fluid matrix." Consistency is the stated test: "if one student gets detention for talking back to the teacher and another thing gets a spending [suspension]… what's that going for student disparities." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:37:21 | Rep. Hemingway: two ways it could have gone | "My name is Henning Way [Wayne Hemingway]… I have a daughter in CMS." He thanks the responders, then: "Seeing a gun that looks like it might have been a real gun. It could have gone two ways… So we sit there and say it was just a BB gun. We yeah, it was a BB gun, but we have to look at it looked like a real gun and it could have gone different ways." He puts the incident against the city's wider picture: "Claremont… It's the largest city in Sullivan County… Our our major problem is drugs." | |
| 0:40:26 | A father who was in the parking lot | "first I'd like to know what we're doing proactively to identify kids who may have issues. And what are we doing to contain those kids in those issues prior to… just putting them through to the next three to the next school". Then the second question — how four students were out of class for 40 minutes unnoticed — and his own account: "I was supposed to pick up my sons to go to a dentist appointment. So I arrived shortly after all the police arrived… at that point, the community knew this was not a drill. Something's going on. There's a gun in the school. And, you know, my heart sank." He closes by thanking the responders who "ran in to unknown danger." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:43:51 | Herrington on students of concern — and on saying no more in public | He first sets a limit: "I do want to be, respectful. I know, I mean, we're not saying names, but, you know, this is on television, and I want to be respectful, so I'm just keeping generalities." Then: "Every student, that has an issue that may rise to a concern in this building is well known and well worked with. And there are plans and then there are other plans… There wasn't any one person involved in this that wasn't well known by the administrative staff, that didn't have plans that are working on." | |
| 0:45:49 | The new hallway rule | "if you are not where you were supposed to be and you were out wandering halls, I'm just sending you home. It is. It is a safety risk. I am not playing around. There were a few students that didn't think I was serious. They found out they won [were wrong]." He acknowledges the cost — "It is not an ideal situation, but I don't ever want to be in this place again" — and the difficulty of a "45 year old man" telling a 14-year-old how the halls work. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:47:26 | A student principal advisory committee | "I put out to the student body a principal, a student principal advisory committee, about 17 to 20 students. Apply for it. It's right now the structure is going to be two students for every grade." He names the mix he is after — athletes, drama students, students in nothing, high achievers, students who struggle — so that "they can come to me or any other administrator or any other teacher and actually, you know, talk about the issues." | POSITIVE |
| 0:50:24 | Is anyone watching the cameras live? | A parent of a freshman asks whether anyone monitors the feeds live and "if not, you think there would have been any benefit to the incident management or future incident management if there was somebody watching the line?" Pratt: "currently we don't we don't have anyone watching to defeat [the feed] live to to monitor the halls." And: "we had the exact same question… I think it would have made a difference in hindsight." He says the district is "looking at ways to, possibly bring back that position that was here at the high school." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:51:53 | "sharing the why some things can't happen" | A parent who says she conducts investigations for the state: "when we can't come up with a preponderance of evidence to prove their allegations… they're really pissed. They're really angry. Why can't you do this?… Because we can't. And we also can't share that information. One thing that may be helpful is that, sharing the why some things can't happen." Pratt's answer sits alongside it: "as public schools, we're dealing with so much… I'm not a mental health person. I'm not a police investigator. But we're trying to do the best we can in what we have." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:55:57 | Ashley Goff: "It needs to be announced. This is not a drill." | "My name is Ashley Goff. I have a son who is a sixth grader at CFS [CMS], and I have a freshman year and junior year." Her daughters told her that some classrooms grasped it was real and others took it for a drill: "Other classrooms didn't know, and they thought this was a drill and their friends were pulling around… they weren't being as cautious." Her point about drills since kindergarten: "it becomes normal and you know, who cares. Then they're going to play around, they're going to fool around. They need to know when it's real. It needs to be announced. This is not a drill." Pratt replies that at the high school "the kids knew it was real, just by the tone of the inflection", and undertakes to take the question to the police. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:58:55 | Bill Madden, from the podium, two days before being seated at the board table | "My name is Bill Madden. I have a son. Stevens, graduated this year." He raises hallway passes that cannot be checked, a gym door he once found locked, and then the part that stops the room: his son was told at parent-teacher conferences that he was being bullied — "So I'm going to live with that guilt for the rest of my life. So it is real." His last point is the one another commenter picks up later: "I don't think the administration know what the simple rules are. As far as discipline, it's different from different schools. It's different from one teach[er] it to another teacher and it's not enforced." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:07:27 | Rep. Damon on mental health and student peers | "I'm Damon, I wanted to say in Concord, I sit on the Education Funding Committee." She describes an organization working "to engage students in how to make their school environment safer", premised on the idea that "the students know who is not in a good place", and asks the panel about "connections on mental health and recognizing which students have some needs and how are we doing it, recognizing them and then getting those needs met." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:09:08 | "very, very difficult to expel the student" | An unnamed commenter who speaks from inside the expulsion and harassment-hearing process — the dialogue file records the voice as "likely a current or recently retired school board member" and marks the identification uncertain — says: "…is very, very difficult to expel the student. There is state law that is very precise and very restrictive, and some of these restrictions have come within the last few years." The remedy offered is legislative: "the advocacy can start in concrete [Concord] as well." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:10:27 | McCosker: two clinicians hired, two never arrived | "One of the first tactics I had when I came in July, first to find the mental health clinician for us, because we had a great deal of students who knew [needed] that service, the first one was signed right before I came on. She never showed us, so went back to the drawing board. Found another one, got her to the point where she was on board and ready to start… Changed her mind. Didn't want to come." The district then contracted with Counseling Associates. "So just know that the issues are real. But we're working to try to fill the gaps." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:13:02 | Enrollment and counselors, from the floor | A rapid crosstalk exchange the diarizer could not separate: an audience question "How many students are currently at" Stevens, answers of "400", "And 71?", "471."; then "How many times [many] counselors? One." and "Two one." Pratt: "It's just a shorter [shortage]… there's a lot of shortage areas out there." He recalls a point when the district had no counselor at one school and "only have two, maybe three social work[ers]", and posts that go unfilled: "Repost and repost and we just can't find it." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:16:44 | Romeo: how CMS tries to notice a child before something happens | Three named practices: a ten-minute hallway alert — "any student after ten minutes. We have teachers to call the office so that we can go look for them"; per-student pass alerts for "Certain students of interest, let's say. So if they have a pass to leave the classroom, the admin gets alerts that they are in the hallway"; and a faculty-meeting exercise — "We put every kid's name up on a sheet during faculty meetings, and we ask all of our faculty to go through and put a check mark next to a student that you think you know well… and the students that don't have any check[mark]" go to the counselors "to kind of see and build a bridge and build a rapport with them." His caveat: "it's not 100%." | POSITIVE |
| 1:19:32 | "zero bullying incidents" in the state's data | A commenter who does not give a name: "I'm just looking at the state Department of Education… looking at the bullying just once again. And I looked at the Stevens High School board [board/report] for the last three years, 21 through 24, there were zero bullying incidents. And I'm wondering, where do we go to find out what's really going on?" Pratt: "Not to throw back on a state, but we tend to reach year. We have to submit a report to the state. They probably haven't gotten around to updating it… We spent a lot of time filling out the end of the year reports and discipline suspensions, in-school suspensions, truancy and stuff. So we can say we definitely have bullying." He offers to produce the district's own figures: "We could probably get what we have before we went out to the state." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:22:09 | A retired teacher on buy-in | "whatever we do as adults, the kids have become a buy in. If if they don't, it won't work. I worked with teaching with kids for 36 years." Her challenge: "I would challenge any school board members, parents who are interested in if they could be allowed to go into a school for a day and sit back from a classroom and see how some of our teachers get get treated by some of these kids." She names her grandson, Carter, as being in the room. A following commenter picks up Madden's theme: "you got the matrix and all of this kind of stuff, and it is not followed exactly as written across the district." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:26:37 | Metal detectors — and who pays | A commenter: "I don't know what if one thinks about the drastic measures of putting a metal detectors in the schools at this point? I don't think the the tax rate could handle another increase, but I would I would definitely go get some grants if that's what the majority of the town feels that we need." Pratt: "As far as the detectors, goggles [Google] looked into it, it would be a good day for Grant… It's not something we want to pass on to the taxpayers and what's absolutely necessary regards to keeping the student safe." | |
| 1:28:29 | "the previous administration did not listen to us" | A mother of CMS and Stevens students: "I think that's because the previous administration did not listen to us. They didn't have much of what we had to say. And so we kind of backed off and given up… the difference in CMS, for example, from when my eldest daughter started about five years ago to when my son entered this year is incredible." Her ask of neighbours: "come talk, express your opinions, give your input because they want to work with us." | |
| 1:29:26 | Closing: two committees, and an invitation | Pratt: "I've been doing this for 30 years and it's my 10th year of superintendent… But we need people, more people coming out to express, you know, what you want, want to see in support what we're doing or speak up against something." He dates the superintendent's community committee to "around, I would say December" — before the February incident — and hopes to join it with Dr. Herrington's student advisory committee: "hopefully at some point we get the two committees together… We're not there yet." | POSITIVE |