Columnist Sandra Thompson: Teachers upset by threatening student

Sandra Thompson

Sunday, June 6, 1999 | 9:50 a.m.

ONE OF THE most important lessons school administrators across the country learned from the shootings at Columbine High School was to take threats of violence seriously.

Students also were encouraged to come forward if they knew of threats or plots.

So what happened when two local high school teachers alerted their principal that they had been repeatedly threatened by a student and feared for their safety?

The principal told them to "change your phone numbers" and "stop acting like victims."

That's not the response they expected. In fact, one of the teachers was so distraught that she left her job in May and is undergoing counseling. After three years at the school, she will work at another school next year.

"I love what I do," she says. "But this was the final straw."

She has eight years' teaching experience; her colleague just finished her first year.

Both teach classes for seriously emotionally challenged students. They had received "threats" before, but say they can recognize the difference between a kid just mouthing off and one who seriously intends to harm someone.

They give a troubling account of incidents over the past few months. Among them are:

* The student talked about events similar to what took place at Columbine months before the shooting, leading the teachers to believe that the student may have communicated with the young gunmen on the Internet. He discussed his "Mafia Internet friends" as far back as February.

* The student constantly talked about his ability to make explosives and his computer hacking talents. He allegedly demonstrated the latter.

* The student went into graphic detail in class about the kids who were shot at Columbine. The teachers say he remarked, "There should have been more people killed. ... Wasn't that cool?"

* The teachers have had rocks thrown at their homes and mysterious phone messages left on their answering machines. Although they have no proof, the teachers suspect the student.

* The student allegedly put chlorine tablets in plastic bottles of Sprite during the nutrition break at school. Recipes for bombs were found in his room at home, but because police found no materials to make bombs, they couldn't charge the student, the teachers say.

* The teachers say they spoke to the student's parents who claimed they were overreacting; their son was just looking for attention.

* The teachers were told by an outside source that they were on a "hit list."

The principal says that he did take the teachers' concerns seriously. "I won't condone it (students making threats against teachers)," he says.

However, he says, there was no proof that the student was calling them at home or throwing rocks at their windows. The principal could only deal with what could be substantiated in class. And when that occurred, he says, action was taken. The student was placed on home instruction, pending placement in another program.

The teachers would have preferred expulsion, but say it's difficult to expel a special-education student.

Ironically, in the waning hours of the session Memorial Day weekend, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 521, giving teachers more say in whether a disruptive pupil should be removed from the classroom. It also addresses pilot projects for alternative classrooms for disruptive students.

"We waited too long for that," Sue Strand, president of the Clark County Education Association, says of AB521.

She says the two teachers' experience is not an isolated incident. "A wide range of teachers have expressed fear for their safety," Strand says.

The principal says school police were alerted about the teachers' concerns. Although the teachers say they were not aware of that, Strand says that sometimes administrators don't get back to the teaching ranks to tell them action is being taken.

The younger teacher says that despite the threatening student, it's worth teaching seriously emotionally challenged students. Most of them are grateful to her. "You get to know them intimately," she says, adding that she's been told she gets too emotionally attached to her students.

She believes that, especially in the aftermath of Columbine, all schools should go over emergency procedures with their staffs.

"This school district has been reactive for so long, it doesn't know how to be proactive," the teachers say.