Parents Protest Closed Security Forum

A day after holding a closed meeting with 120 school and law enforcement officials on campus security issues, Orange County Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Rackauckas pledged Wednesday to open up the discussion next time.

Keeping parents out of Tuesday’s meeting at Mission Viejo High School was a mistake, said Leticia Iglesias, associate director of the Parents Institute for Quality Education in Santa Ana, which holds seminars for parents and school officials on issues like campus security.

Parents across Orange County are worried about random violence at schools and need to be more involved in plans to make their children safer, she said.

“A lot of parents know of things through their children that would be helpful for these discussions, or they live in the neighborhood and know what goes on,” Iglesias said. “There always should be parent representatives at every meeting.”

Tuesday’s meeting was the third closed session Rackauckas has held with various school district officials since January. The earlier meetings focused on protecting teachers from student violence, he said.

Those meetings, attended by fewer than half a dozen people, were kept private so that officials could be more candid, and because of confidentiality concerns lest students’ names and specific security situations were discussed, he said.

Attendance for Tuesday’s session mushroomed in the wake of recent school tragedies: the fatal shootings of 14 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado and the deaths of two preschoolers at a day-care center in Costa Mesa. Several Orange County high schools reported bomb scares and other security threats after the Columbine shootings.

Tuesday’s round-table discussion was attended by principals from schools in the Capistrano Unified, Laguna Beach and Saddleback Valley school districts, and by police officials from those areas.

Rackauckas defended closing the meeting. “We decided we’d have a more open exchange of ideas,” he said.

Calling it “the first stage of the process,” Rackauckas said his office would form a committee in coming months to develop a comprehensive plan for responding to school emergencies, and would seek ideas from parents and the community.

Meeting attendees discovered, for example, that police departments in many cases lack floor plans of their local schools. Attendees also received tips on searching student lockers for weapons or other forbidden items.

“The tragedy in Columbine points out the necessity for everyone to know what they’re doing” in case of an emergency, Rackauckas said. “We definitely need to make sure parents and students are aware of what we’re doing and solicit their ideas.”

Saddleback Valley Unified School District spokeswoman Elaine Carter said the Tuesday meeting was closed by school officials to prevent the disclosure of students’ names should individual cases of juvenile delinquency be discussed.

But Rackauckas acknowledged that there was no expectation of confidentiality with a group of Tuesday’s size.

Terry Francke, general counsel for the California 1st Amendment Coalition, said some private meetings by government employees are appropriate. Because no elected officials were involved, the state’s open-meeting law didn’t apply to Tuesday’s session.