Superintendent sought student mental health help months before shooting at Richfield school

tax they have charged two students with second-degree murder and attempted murder in a shooting that delicate a 15-year-old student outside the South Education Center in Richfield, Minnesota, on Tuesday.

According to the criminal complaint from the Hennepin County District Attorney’s office, five male students walked out of the school building and began fighting in the parking lot. One of the students allegedly pulled a gun from his pocket and fired. That student and another student then got into a car and drove away, continuing to fire several more shots.

Jahmari Rice died from those shots and another 17-year-old student is now in critical condition, according to authorities.

This incident, however, is not the first time this academic year that a District 287 student allegedly has a weapon. The first week of school in September 2021, district leaders said a student brought a weapon to school.

District Superintendent Sandy Lewandowski called it a serious security incident at the time and sent a communication to district staff, students, and families, promising to do a comprehensive review of all district safety measures.

In the memo, Lewandowski insisted that a safe school environment did not depend on metal detectors, which had been removed from district buildings. Instead, he urged staff to focus on a much more comprehensive approach, including measures such as building relationships and empathy, noticing when “someone seems ‘off,'” and regularly assessing students’ physical and emotional well-being.

District 287 is an intermediate district serving some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students, including children with autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, and cognitive or emotional disorders. The school’s model is based on a small army of staff working together to support students, often with individual intervention.

In recent years, the district has made investments to be more trauma responsive, training staff in trauma, crisis, and de-escalation. They substituted their school resource officers with student safety trainers and removed metal detectors from their buildings.

But as the pandemic swept through Minnesota, Lewandowski began to express concern about its effect on his student population. At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, he posted a opinion piece in the Star Tribune headlined “The Kids Aren’t Okay,” in which he shared that during the first five months of 2021 he had received eight notices about deaths affecting his student population.

“Whether by suicide, drug overdose, or community violence, their deaths point to one thing: our youth are not well and their mental health is seriously at risk,” he wrote.

In that op-ed and other communications, he pleaded with community members, lawmakers and political leaders to consider the impact of the pandemic and systemic racism on children and to do more to provide new and more intense forms of health care. mental in their schools and others. throughout the state.

“The unmet mental health needs of students and school safety incidents are inextricably connected,” Lewandowski wrote. “We are getting a clearer picture of the consequences of the past year on student mental health and the growing responsibility of schools to be on the front lines of the children’s mental health system.”

As of late September 2021, according to an email from a district spokesperson to MPR News, Lewandowski had sent more than 27 communications and made numerous phone calls to two governors, three Minnesota Department of Education commissioners, congressmen, legislators and the chairman of the governor’s board. Children’s Cabinet among others, warning them about “the extraordinary needs of District 287.”

He called the reality of the district a “red flag,” saying the pandemic and race-related trauma were compounding the serious mental health conditions students in the district were already experiencing.

Beyond student mental health challenges, the district, like almost everyone else in Minnesota, has been struggling with a severe staffing shortage. It was an issue that Lewandowski said led to challenges “from general safety to … personal well-being” for staff and students.

According to a district spokesperson, Education Commissioner Heather Mueller was “committed to finding a solution” on the occasions Lewandowski reached out by phone to discuss critical safety issues, interactions that Lewandowski saw as “steps in the right direction.” correct”. The superintendent was also hopeful Governor Tim Walz’s Budget Recommendationswhich he said includes measures that would “support our district.”

According to the state Department of Education, District 287 has received a five-year federally funded program grant aimed at improving their school mental health system.

Lewandowski’s warnings show a history of concern about behaviors he saw from students in his schools, as well as concerns that his district didn’t have the resources to meet student needs.

James Densley, a professor at Metropolitan State University and co-founder of The Violence Project, a nonpartisan think tank focused on youth violence and school shootings, said his research supports a comprehensive approach to school safety that involves much more than detectors. of metals and school resources. Officials Arriving at real solutions on the prevention of school violence, according to Densley, implies understanding the root of what causes the violence.

“Violence is increasing. And the schools that seem to be bearing the brunt of that violence are urban schools that have historically low graduation rates, serve students who come from the most disadvantaged circumstances, and are disproportionately students of color,” Densley said. “School violence is a problem of social justice. We absolutely need to focus like a laser beam on violence prevention, because it is affecting the most vulnerable in our society.”

Densley said his research discourages knee-jerk safety measures, like more police in schools or more security gadgets. Instead, she points to measures like counselors, student mental health supports and behavioral threat assessments as key efforts needed to prevent violence in schools.

But even these efforts, he said, are just Band-Aids in the end.

“Our failure to address that has meant that we’ve had to create a kind of alternative ecosystem to try to address that problem,” Densley said. “And that alternate reality is that we need metal detectors, we need armed security. We need to arm the teachers – people discuss this kind of thing because we haven’t managed to address the real issue here.”