Two students, dead.
Two teachers, dead.
Nine others, wounded.
Twenty-six teachers – on the front lines of the effort to quickly apprehend the student charged with wielding the assault-style weapon in the carnage.
All that happened on the morning of Sept. 4 at Appalachee High School in Winder, Ga., and the latter led to freshman Colt Gray, 14, surrendering to authorities who said he opened fire in the hallway and a classroom.
While the onslaught lasted around a minute, the 26 aforementioned teachers during that time directly summoned 911 and local police to the school – and they didn’t use their cellphones once.
The emergency messages were delivered via specially equipped alert badges that had only been in use for a week after their purchase by the Barrow County school district.
And now, Adam Henkins, who directs school safety for Monongalia County’s district, is leaning toward the same technology from Centegix, the Atlanta company that makes and markets the warning technology.
“I think that’s probably the next step for us in school safety,” he told Mon’s Board of Education Tuesday night.
Colt Gray has since been charged with four counts of felony murder and is in custody in Georgia.
His father, Colin Gray, who gifted his son the rifle tapped as the one used in the shootings, was also detained after being charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for allowing his son access to the weapon, police said.
Henkins and board members here said the local district is tasked with putting in every measure possible to keep students, teachers and other personnel safe.
Newly elected board member Shawn Smith, who is also the parent of child who attends school in the district, seconded that.
“If there’s anything that’s going to keep us up at night, it’s not test scores, it’s not this or that,” he said. “It’s the safety of our children.”
Concerns over safety were in the forefront two weeks ago for a number of parents of Morgantown High School students who chided the school district on social media – for what they said were failures in properly notifying them of a threat at MHS that turned out to be unfounded.
Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr., though, along with Mike Kelly, board president, said the threat was quickly investigated.
The district, the pair said, echoing Smith, has Safe Schools entrances in its buildings, to go with the high-tech weapons detectors that students at MHS, University High and Clay-Battelle must walk through every morning on their way to class.
There are plenty of other protocols in place, they said, which they didn’t want to discuss in great detail, because of the obvious need for confidentiality.
Board member Christina Fattore Morgan brought up the matter of the district’s new smartphone-free policy, which locks away the devices of students in high-tech magnetic pouches for the duration of the school day.
She said while she, as a parent – her children are also in school here – understood that while a mom or dad would want to communicate with their kid during an emergency, it could also make a deadly situation even more so.
Henkins agreed.
Cell networks could be inundated and could crash altogether, the safety director said.
Parents could rush to the school and snarl traffic for emergency responders, as what happened in Georgia, he said.
Morgan, who is also in classrooms daily as a professor at WVU, said the district and its school board needs to reach out quickly and effectively should a threat – or the possibility of one – arise.
Parents need to be reassured, she said, with the understanding that not all details can be divulged in the moment.
“There needs to be trust between us and the community,” she said, “and that’s lacking right now.”
Meanwhile, she and her fellow board members voted unanimously to expel a student for the rest of the 2024-25 academic year – for violating Safe Schools guidelines.
Over in Preston County, and the sheriff’s department is aware of and continue to monitor messages trending on social media that threaten possible violence in that district’s schools. Those threats are general and do not specify Preston High School.
No verified or credible threats specific to Preston High School have been identified, according to officials.
Anyone with knowledge of specific threats or suspicious activity should contact the West Virginia State Police, local authorities, or 911.
