Monday was a day of jurors’ instructions and governor’s proclamations: both related to the emotional health of students in America’s schools.
In Michigan, a jury began deliberations in the first case of its kind in America.
That jury was still out, as of 5:30 p.m. Monday.
Jennifer Crumbley is facing a verdict on four counts of manslaughter – one for each student fatally gunned down in the main hallway of a suburban Detroit high school in November 2021.
Her son, Ethan, who was 15 at the time of the onslaught, confessed to killing his classmates at Oxford High, while wounding others. He is now serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for his crimes.
Authorities said she didn’t do enough to help her troubled son, who was caught shopping for ammunition online and sketching out scenes depicting gun violence while in class.
James Crumbley, her husband and Ethan’s father, stands trial on those same charges next month.
Her attorneys argued that school counselors and other officials didn’t properly communicate their concerns to her, and, that as a caring mom, she would have known if her son was harboring homicidal notions.
As the jury in Michigan was going out, a proclamation was also making its way across the Mountain State from Gov. Jim Justice, marking National School Counseling Week, which runs through Friday.
Both the governor and state Superintendent of Schools Michele L. Blatt said today’s generation of counselors aren’t just about offering up advice for careers and college entrance applications.
Current counselors, they said, must also act as anchors and buffers – in response to the stressors students are bringing into the school building.
“Every West Virginia school counselor is charged with a duty to support students and ensure they become productive, well-adjusted adults of tomorrow,” Blatt said.
Which, in today’s angst-riddled climate, is hardly easy, watchers say.
Especially, they say, with fears of gun violence putting a shadow over everything in the school building.
Nervous numbers
Those fears were borne out in a survey this past August by the advocacy group, EdChoice, when 80% of parents responding said gun violence in their child’s school was an inevitability – either today, next month or next year.
Another 42% of teachers responding to annual morale survey publicized that same month by Merrimack College’s Winston School of Education and Social Policy, said they worry daily about the emotional health of students in their classrooms.
In Monongalia County, the most recent responses from this September’s Panorama survey showed elementary school-age youngsters reflecting adult fears over household finances.
“Think about a third- or fourth- or fifth-grader worrying about paying the bills,” Michael Ryan said.
Ryan, who directs diversity and inclusion services for Mon Schools, is also the current president of the West Virginia School Counselor Association and was the state’s Counselor of the Year in 2018.
Mon’s district, unlike many of its Mountain State neighbors, has the resources to hire more counselors, however.
Even so, his colleagues here at home, he said, also know there’s still a lot of post-pandemic work to be done.
“You always hear that ‘things will never be the same again,’” he said.
“Well, they shouldn’t be. Because we’re learning. We can take the good and use it.”
Grading on a curve of accountability?
As said, the Michigan trials are the nation’s first, in that the parents of a school shooter are also being charged for ignoring or enabling conditions leading to the act.
The murder weapon in Michigan was an early Christmas present for Ethan, a gun enthusiast.
Jennifer Crumbley’s trial and the court proceedings of her husband’s to follow bring accountability to the front of the classroom.
What adults do in the moment. What adults do before the moment and after the moment.
Last month’s report on Uvalde by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland echoed all that accountability and all those actions and reactions.
Garland said “cascading failures” in response, tactics and command structure at the scene added to the carnage at an elementary school in the tiny Texas town on May 24, 2022.
A gunman continued to target victims while officers, in full tactical gear, were bottled up in a hallway just a few doors down awaiting orders. Nineteen students and two teachers died before the perpetrator was shot dead.
