Sandy Hook, ten years after: W.Va. state school board members hear about safety initiatives here
Dec. 15—On the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Conn., a relatively prosperous and fairly crime-free town some 75 miles northeast of New York City, an emotionally troubled 20-year-old pulled into the parking lot Sandy Hook Elementary School.
He was armed with a high-caliber rifle and ammunition, and the car he was driving belonged to his mother, whom he had shot dead earlier, as she slept in her bed.
Adam Lanza literally blasted his way into the building, and by the time he was done, there were 26 more victims.
Twenty of them were children, mostly between the ages of 6 and 7.
Six more were adults, including the principal, who shouted a warning to her colleagues before she was shot.
At least two teachers died while trying to use their bodies to shield their students.
Lanza, too, lay dead.
Suicide, as police closed in.
The significance of that date wasn't lost on Jonah Adkins, as he addressed members of the state Board of Education on the morning of Dec. 14, 2022, in Charleston.
It was the last session of the fall school term for the board, and Adkins, an accountability coordinator in the state Department of Education, was using the grim anniversary to talk about school safety — and school violence.
"Children lost their lives at the hands of a coward, " the administrator said of Sandy Hook.
A decade after the carnage there, gun violence is still making for sharp, flinching echoes in school hallways — while casting deep, mournful shadows over local districts and school board offices.
The nation is still reeling over the mass shooting last spring at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Abbott Elementary carried a double horror.
While students were being murdered across two classrooms, armed officers were milling about in the hallway — surveillance video showed one using hand sanitizer from a dispenser — while awaiting orders that never came.
That's because no officers in Uvalde actually knew who was in charge that day.
Meanwhile, as a former middle school principal, Adkins likely would have acknowledged Newtown anyway, but then last week happened.
On Wednesday, Dec. 7, emergency dispatch centers in 17 counties across the Mountain State took 19 calls, warning of active shooters in school buildings.
MECCA 911 took one saying the same at Morgantown High School.
The hoax is known as "swatting " — and its goal is to get as many responders to the scene as possible, with the SWAT team being the big prize.
It's believed that the same group that has been besieging emergency responders across the nation this fall was behind last week's ruse here.
Adkins reminded board members that the anonymous reporting app known as "See Send " has now been loaded onto the school-issued social media devices of "most " of the state's public students.
"See Send " allows them, along with teachers and parents, to make instant reports to authorities, should they see anything suspicious on school grounds or in the parking lot.
The app is part of the response of the state's public school system to the events of Uvalde, in particular.
A uniform school safety document from the state Department of Homeland Security has also been rolled out as part of the response. Locally, high-tech weapons detectors are now in use at MHS, University High and Clay-Battelle in Mon County, as districts began to craft their own preventive measures.
Last week's "swat, " Adkins said, turned out to be a prank with a purpose. Uniformed officers were at the respective schools within minutes after calls came in.
"I want to publicly thank all of our officers for their overwhelming response, " he said.
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