School Leaders Offer Advice on Dealing With Shootings

Administrators from the San Diego County high school district where two campus shootings occurred in March met Wednesday with Los Angeles County school and community officials to offer advice.

Leaders of the Grossmont Union High School District, which includes Santana and Granite Hills high schools, emphasized the importance of creating detailed emergency plans and coordinating those efforts with law enforcement, school leaders and support workers.

Grossmont Supt. Granger Ward also announced that he has asked 11 local civic leaders to serve on a commission to investigate the shootings and make recommendations on preventing future tragedies.

Since the shootings, Ward said, “we have focused on returning our campuses to a sense of normalcy. . . . Now we must shift our focus to where we go from here.”

Ward said the commission will hold a series of forums to hear from students, parents, school employees and others. The commission is set to make recommendations to the school board July 11.

The event, attended by about 150 people, was held at the Sheraton Cerritos Hotel, was sponsored by the county Office of Education. The purpose was to aid school supervisors in fine-tuning their own crisis management plans and informing them of services available to help them, said Gus Frias, coordinator of the Safe Schools program for the department.

Georgette Torres, principal of Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, described in detail the day a student allegedly shot and wounded five people.

On March 22, Torres was sitting with six students selecting winners of the school’s Golden Apple teaching award. After recognizing the sound of gunshots, she pulled out a cellular phone and started locking down the school.

“I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘Oh, my God, this can’t be happening at my school,’ ” said Torres. It was only weeks after the Santana High School shooting March 5 in Santee, in which two students were killed and 13 other people wounded, allegedly by a student.

Torres said she was able to respond quickly because the school had just updated and practiced implementing its crisis plan in response to the Santana incident.

“If you are a district administrator, force your site administrators to develop real plans, not fake plans,” said Warren Williams, assistant superintendent of the district. “I can’t stress enough [the importance of] communication with police, fire and other agencies,” he said.

For many years, the state has required safety plans for all public schools. Since 1999, about $71 million has been allocated each year to help schools develop safety initiatives.

The Grossmont school district continues to deal with the aftershock of the shootings.

There is a mental health trailer at Santana to address the increase in reckless student behavior and depression. There are regular focus groups to help the community figure out what it could have done differently.

But the most important factor, said Williams, is detailed planning. “You can’t do too much planning,” he said.

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Times staff writer Tony Perry contributed to this story.