A truly sad commentary on our society's failure to deal with gun violence and our educational systems' failure to develop a mastery-based model of education.*

I hope everyone is ok.

*Worth watching 10 mins Ted Talk if you haven't already:
Web Link

PAPD announcement said there was a note on the classroom door threatening to "shoot up" the classroom. There was supposed to be a final exam in the classroom later. PAUSD needs to install cameras all over campus.

This should be a wake up call to PAUSD about its emergency preparedness. A teacher found a note on the door at 9 am, but was this after school started? Is there a way that if it had been discovered at 8 am that the students could have been prevented from arriving at school? Were parents informed of what was happening? Students presumably were texting parents about their perception of what was happening and how was this managed?

The article sounds like a police statement, not a piece of journalism. The real information is necessary for the Palo Alto community to know what really happened. Otherwise we are left with more unanswered questions and rumors from the students who probably had very little idea of the real cause at the time, and were naturally very scared.

I hope the school can find out who put the note on the door.
They need to face consequences!

The school had a lackluster response in my opinion. Some classrooms went into full lockdown with barricades and some just locked the door and closed the curtains and turned off the lights. All teachers were still teaching through this. Literally told to keep teaching. My student texted me asking if I know what was going on because teachers weren’t telling them anything. Kids were all texting each other between their classrooms trying to get info. It’s so wrong that they kept on teaching like it’s just another day. Teachers can’t teach under those circumstances kids cant learn. can’t learn. dten

Student journalism is the best. From the Paly Voice
thepalyvoice Students and staff are expressing mixed reactions about the shelter-in-place order after the discovery this morning of a shooting threat posted outside a classroom at Palo Alto High School
..
According to a Palo Alto Police Department press release at 12:26 p.m., officers received a call at 8:57 a.m. this morning about a written threat of violence taped on the front door of Room 806, the Advanced Placement Psychology classroom. The threat indicated that the person who left the note intended to "shoot up" the classroom at 9:15 a.m. Administrators issued a shelter-in-place request over the public announcement system at 9:16 a.m. while officers investigated the situation. At
10:25 a.m. school officials lifted the shelter-in-place and officers remained on campus for the rest of the school day.
Science teacher Margaret Deng was teaching when the announcement was made and said she interpreted the shelter-in-place as a lockdown order.
"It [the announcement] was really hard to hear actually, but we did hear it," Deng said.
"We heard the word shelter in place, and I was like 'Great, it's a lockdown' because the admin[istrators] actually just never told us the difference between a lockdown and a shelter in place. They also said on the announcement, close all your blinds and your windows and lock the doors and then I did not hear the part where they said teach as usual."
Deng said a lack of clear communication about the protocols to follow during the shelter-in-place made her feel unprepared.
"I was actually texting an admin during the thing [the shelter-in-place], but there was no overall email from admin or texts from admin [for the first half hour]" Deng said.
"So, as a teacher, I felt like I was getting kept in the dark because I had no idea what was going on. I found out a lot of what was happening from the students"

Thanks to the Paly Voice for their journalistic integrity.

From this Voice article and from anecdotal comments online from parents and students, it seems that this was not a perfect response to such a note. PAPD twitter feed kept the community informed and the students and school safe. But it seems that the administration and staff were floundering as to what the different instructions meant and how to proceed. We have teacher training days and practice drills for all supposed eventualities, but the question has to be asked if this is enough?

Fortunately this had a happy outcome. Everyone was safe. But what is clear is that if this was in fact a more serious situation, what mistakes would have cost lives or serious injuries? This has to be a learning situation for all PAUSD. It does seem that better practices, better communication and better training needs to be done.

Let this be a lesson that will cause changes for the better. Next time, it may be much more serious.