I’ve had an interesting several days… Tuesday when I went to pick up the kids from school, I was sitting out in the parking lot reading a book while I waited. I heard the bell ring at 3:45 and put my book away so I could watch for the kids.
My grandson Josh came out the door almost immediately, along with a bunch of other kids. Most of them headed for buses. About the time he reached the car, we heard an announcement that all the kids were to return to the building. Josh didn’t. He just got in the car with me. But they had teachers going out to the buses and taking all those kids back into the school.
A few seconds later two police SUVs came speeding up the hill from nowhere… not on any road, just driving across the field… they drove toward the front of the school, one of them stopping near the gym doors and the other going to the front near the office. Then we saw more police cars on a side street on the far side of the park next to the school. Then MORE SUVs driving up from another spot on the field.
My granddaughter Jessa called my cell phone from the school and said they were in a “lock out” and she didn’t know when she would be able to leave. She didn’t seem concerned about anything more than me waiting for her and not knowing where she was or why.
Another SUV came speeding up the hill and parked next to my car and a police officer got out of it and ran up to the backdoor of the school. His radio was left on and Josh and I could hear it but no real information from it.
Another mother who had arrived after this all began came over to the car to ask what was going on. She introduced herself as Patty and said she had told her husband to listen to the radio in their car to find out what he could.
I called the radio station I normally listen to, but today’s radio stations in this country, aren’t very interested in local news. They didn’t know anything at all about it and said they would find out what was going on and announce it on the radio. About twenty minutes later there was an announcement of “breaking news,” but it was about something in Washington, D.C., not anything about our own breaking news.
So we sat and waited. The school made an announcement that there had been a “police incident” in the neighborhood and that the children were all safe in the school, with repititions of that announcement every fifteen or twenty minutes or so for about an hour.
At about 4:30 more cars and a school bus arrived in the parking lot and we learned there was a scheduled volleyball match that afternoon. The school bus left with the opposing team, but most of the newly arrived cars stayed, completely jamming the parking lot.
A school district security SUV came through the field and into the parking lot, and its driver told a few of us that there had been an attempted robbery on the other side of the park and a shot had been fired when the robbery victims were uncooperative with the robber. They had all left the area, with probably no idea of the chaos they had caused.
I went and told the other mother what “news” there was and learned that her husband, who was with her, has autism and was extremely upset over the change in routine and all the people around.
And we waited some more.
At about 5:30 the word started spreading through the parking lot that the suspected perpetrator had been apprehended and everyone was safe and the children would be released soon. Parents were supposed to go to the front office and show proper identification and they would be given a “sticky note” that they could then take around the school to the gym doors and use the note to request their children.
I walked to the front of the school with Patty and her husband after leaving Josh in the car and telling him to keep the car doors locked while he waited. On the way, I passed dozens of police officers at each door to the school. They had said everything was over and everyone was safe, so why are there still all these police at every door to the school?
When I got to the front of the school there were about 150 parents standing on the small patio trying to get in with their ID, and funnelling out into two lines that I couldn’t see the ends of, one going north and one going south up and down the street in front of the school.
There were vehicles of all kinds parked along the street on both sides for as far as I could see… and they were passing out one sticky note at a time, with the lucky recipient then having to fight their way back through the crowd of people who were trying to get in so they could walk around the outside of the building to the gym doors at the side of the school and get in another line to collect their child(ren).
I worried about Josh sitting out there in the dark by himself for what looked like it would be hours. Patty said she would save my place in line, so I went back out to the car and decided to find someplace a little closer to either the front door or the door the children were being let out.
On the way, Josh and I saw Jessa standing with a couple of friends and a police officer near one of the buses. She saw us and tried to come to us, but was stopped by the officer. He came over to the car and said he would keep her there while I went to the office for my sticky note. (grrr)
I found a place to park under one of the parking lot lights and Josh and I walked to the front of the school, and got back in line with Patty and her husband, who was taking all this rather well I thought. The school had added a few more stations where sticky notes were being handed out, only they had run out of sticky notes and were now tearing off little bits of paper.
When I called the office from my cell phone to ask if there weren’t some faster method that these hundreds, maybe more than a thousand people could be processed so they could pick up their children and get home, I was told that this is the process. It might not be the best process, but it was what they were doing. I was given two school district numbers I could call to talk to someone if I were interested. Of course, I was interested. I called the numbers. The first one was answered by a voice message informing me that I had reached their office before 8am or after 5pm (DUH!!) and I could leave a message. The second one was answered by a woman who told me there was nothing she could do, but her boss, who had initiated this process, was in the office at the school.
So I called the office again and asked to speak to him and was told it might be difficult to “call him away from his important duties,” but I could hold if I liked. I said I would like, and was put on hold. I guess he couldn’t get away from his important duties though because the person who answered the phone was the school’s police liaison, who said they couldn’t just release the children because there might be restraining orders in place to prevent one or another person from picking up the children from school, and they had to make sure that didn’t happen. He, too, admitted this was perhaps not the best process but it’s the process they were using, and if I didn’t like it there was nothing I could do about it.
It was well after 6:30 by then. The lines were even longer than they had been when I first got to the front door, but at least I was getting closer.
Jessa called on my cell phone again to ask if I could pick up her friend and take her home because her parents had neither a phone nor a car and she was worried the friend wouldn’t have a way to get home. I had awful visions of having to come back to the school with more parents to stand in line to pick up Jessa’s friend.
I watched as people showed their ID to the school staff and their child(ren)’s names were written on the top and the bottom of small scraps of paper. The papers were torn in half with the bottom half going to the parent and the top half taken into the office so they could keep track of which children had been released. I didn’t see any kind of checking going on to make sure the children weren’t being released to any restrained parents.
Josh and I saw that one of the staff members helping the line we were in was his band teacher. When we got to the station she didn’t look at my ID. She saw that Josh was already with me and asked if it were Jessa we were picking up. I said yes and she wrote Jessa’s name on the top and bottom of our scrap of paper and sent us away with a friendly smile and a shake of her head.
I didn’t get back in line at the gym doors where parents were turning in their scraps of paper and haven’t decided whether or not I feel guilty for jumping ahead of all those other parents. I’m leaning toward not. I went to the first gym door, where they were collecting the scraps of paper, and looked for the officer who had come to my car and told me he would keep Jessa there and I should come back to him with my scrap of paper. I didn’t find him, but did give my paper to another officer there who sent me to the back door of the gym to pick her up.
I asked at that back door, while waiting for Jessa, whether or not I could take her friend home, explaining that her parents didn’t have a phone or a car and no way to come get their daughter. The officer I talked to said that, no, the children could only be released to a parent or guardian. He knew which student I was asking about though, and said that he would personally take her home if her parents weren’t able to come get her.
It was getting really late and there were still probably at least 400 out of the over 800 kids waiting to be released to parents. I have no idea how much longer that process lasted.
