Houston County parents upset at lack of information in gun case

The response by Houston school administrators to a report of a loaded gun at a school there has angered parents.

Brenda Lee, an assistant principal at Huntington Middle School, received a tip on Friday evening, Aug. 14, that a student had been seen with a gun on campus that day. The following Monday, administrators searched the eighth-grader’s locker and had him empty the contents of a bag on Lee’s desk. That search yielded a 9mm handgun with 13 rounds of ammunition, and police were called.

And that’s part of the problem in Aaron Drake’s opinion. Among other things, he said he hasn’t gotten a clear answer whether the gun had been in the locker all weekend -- or with the student.

“If it was on him, he had more opportunities ... to go and shoot the gun at a kid if he wanted,” said Drake, who has a daughter at the Warner Robins school.

Also of concern to parents was a lack of communication from the school regarding the episode. Neither parents nor students knew about the potential threat until media reports surfaced last week -- more than two weeks after it had happened.

“Basically, last week when I saw the article on the Internet, that was the first notification I had,” said one parent who asked not to be named for fear of possible retaliation against her child.

Drake is part of a group of parents that came together through Facebook to address their concerns to the school board, with aims to do so at a future board meeting. Another representative of the group said she is still finding parents who know nothing about the gun’s discovery.

While Drake is also upset that the school didn’t contact parents at the time, he said he’s “appalled” that police weren’t called that Friday, as soon as administrators had reason to believe a weapon had been on campus.

“What kind of person doesn’t call the cops when you know a kid’s bringing a gun to school?” he asked.

Drake said he has posed that question to both school administrators and school board representatives. He wasn’t satisfied with the response he got from Principal Gwendolyn Taylor.

“I got the statement that the kids were safe at all times,” he said, noting that no details were provided regarding the time between when the student got to school and when he was searched.

Requests for a response from Taylor through the school district were denied.

‘THE THREAT WAS GONE’

Another school system administrator that Drake called was Michelle Masters, the district’s assistant superintendent for school operations. While there were several factors involved, Masters’ opinion was clear on when police should have been alerted.

“The police should have been called on Friday,” she told The Telegraph.

Masters wouldn’t get into specifics on any possible repercussions for the Huntington administrators, but she noted that additional training was taking place through the district’s administrative meetings.

Parents weren’t notified of what had happened because, as soon as the gun was found that Monday, both it and the student were removed from campus. Since “the threat was gone,” Masters said she and other school representatives never had to put the school on a “code red” or “code yellow” alert, and parents weren’t called.

“It was a collaborative decision that we had the situation under control,” she said.

Even though parents interviewed were glad the situation was handled without violence, one of them took issue with the choice not to inform parents.

“Parents need to be given all the information possible so they can make decisions about whether or not they want their children there or not,” one parent said.

Masters stressed that student safety was the “No. 1 priority.” Also, she and her staff use every situation as a chance to evaluate practices and make changes if necessary.

“There are going to be people that agree with that, and there are going to be people that disagree with that, but we evaluate each situation as it comes up,” she said of the decision not to alert parents about the gun.

Another aspect that has troubled parents is the notion that the student brought the gun to school because he had been bullied. After initially claiming the gun wasn’t his, the student’s courtroom story of bullying led to a deal allowing him to avoid charges if he moved out of county.

Masters said the Houston County school system trains both students and teachers twice a year on how to handle bullying. She said there was no record of bullying involving the student in question.

“They’re given lots of instruction on how to report bullying, and there had not been any report of bullying in this case,” she said.

Either way, the damage may have been done for parents such as Drake. He expressed support for the educational staff at the school but concern for how a potentially dangerous scenario was handled.

“If the teachers weren’t so incredibly good, my daughter would be in another school already,” he said.

And the root of the problem, in many parents’ eyes, comes back to basic communication.

“If they had just told us, I think there would be a lot less upset people,” one of them said.

To contact writer Jeremy Timmerman, call 744-4331 or find him on Twitter @MTJTimm.

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 8:51 PM with the headline "Houston County parents upset at lack of information in gun case ."