The High Cost of Vigilance, Post-Littleton

Everyone is on edge in this immediate post-Littleton phase. And no one is edgier than school officials.

Who can blame them?

Show me a school district not skittish about any reference to boys and bombs, and I’ll show you a district with its head in the sand.

Which brings me to the problems facing a 15-year-old freshman at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo. Because he’s a minor, I won’t identify him, but I spoke to his mother at length about his plight, which began last Tuesday when he pulled a major-league bonehead play.

As a result, he was arrested. He’s been suspended, and although his parents say Capo Unified officials told them they will push for expulsion, a school district spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm that for me.

Last Monday, six days after the Littleton, Colo., incident in which two heavily armed students killed 13 before shooting themselves, the freshman was in an English class putting the finishing touches on a presentation on Greek mythology.

While doing so, according to the boy’s mother--who says this is the account her son gave school officials and the police--her son and three other boys talked about the Littleton rampage, in which the killers also placed bombs throughout the school.

The mother says the boys mused about what the Littleton killers could have been thinking. A few minutes later, her son returned to his desk and penciled on the desktop what he imagined the Littleton killers thought.

His words were graphic. The language, his mother says, included phrases like “F--- ‘em all,” “I’m going to shoot everybody in school,” “there’s 30 explosives planted around [the school].” Her son also made specific reference to the B wing, which is one of the identifiable wings at Capistrano Valley.

The boy left class but didn’t erase what he’d written. The next morning, school officials queried students, and the boy admitted to the deed. School officials notified police, who took him into custody. He was released later that day to his parents. A Sheriff’s Department spokesman says the case was forwarded to the district attorney’s office for consideration, but no charges had been filed as of Friday.

The boy’s mother says she and her husband in no way condone their son’s actions. They are asking only that school officials not overreact.

“He said he was pretty much thinking about the conversation he and his friends had just had and talking about what was going through these guys’ [in Littleton] minds,” his mother says. “He said he couldn’t tell us what made him write it down, because it doesn’t make any sense to him, either.”

The mother says her son is a surfer, was a member of the freshman football team, is not at all antisocial and has a healthy circle of friends. He did have a disciplinary problem in junior high but had started to turn things around and was doing well in his classes, she says.

She says she contacted The Times because she fears her son will be linked to a story that appeared Friday. In it, Capo Valley High School officials said they decided to post deputies at the school to dispel rumors that it had been targeted for a Littleton-type rampage. One paragraph in the story alluded to the 15-year-old’s arrest on Tuesday and said that might have helped fuel the rumors.

That made it sound, the boy’s mother says, like her son had something to do with the rumor about trouble at school.

School district spokeswoman Julie Jennings told me late Friday the 15-year-old’s situation had nothing to do with the rumor, other than “they’re all interconnected in the sense of what we just experienced as a country last week” in Littleton.

She wouldn’t say what the district might do with the boy.

“[My son] needs to have consequences, absolutely,” his mother says. “This is something he needs to learn from. It’s not that we’re saying, he’s a victim.”

She pleads, however, for context.

“Within the atmosphere of a high school, on desks and on lockers, you’re going to find all sorts of improper comments written down,” she says. “His comments were incredibly insensitive and stupid and really bad timing. It’s all about timing, because a couple months ago we wouldn’t be in this situation now. As adults, we say to him, ‘How could you not know, this is such a sensitive time?’ ”

The answer, most likely, is that he’s 15.

Nerves are frayed. School officials are rightly worried about anything close to a threat.

But as frightening as the boy’s language was, officials need to consider carefully whether he’s really a potential threat or just a freshman with bad judgment.

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.