On October 24, a 19-year-old entered the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis with an AR-15 style weapon and 600 rounds of ammunition. He killed a 15-year-old girl and a 61-year-old teacher. Many students were injured. The police arrived within minutes and killed the shooter, Orlando Harris. Orlando had graduated from the school last year.
ABC News in St. Louis reported:
Harris, who had no criminal history, left a handwritten document in his car speaking about his desire to “conduct this school shooting,” St. Louis Police Commissioner Michael Sack said at a news conference Tuesday.
Sack said Harris wrote: “I don’t have any friends, I don’t have any family, I’ve never had a girlfriend, I’ve never had a social life.” Sack said Harris called himself an “isolated loner,” which was [the police chief said] a “perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
Josie Johnston knew Orlando Harris when he was in middle school. He wasn’t always a monster, she writes. He was a sweet kid. She wonders if there was anything she could have done to save him. She wonders why it was so easy for such a troubled young man to buy a deadly weapon.
How can the Republican Party claim to be opposed to crime when they are making it easy for troubled people of all ages to buy weapons of death?
Josie Johnston writes:
After Monday’s tragic events, I know it’s hard for some people to imagine, but when I met Orlando on his very first day of sixth grade, he was a super sweet boy who wanted to please people. What factors led to his transformation?
He was a great drummer. He loved the drumline, and his face lit up when he played. Yes, he was quiet, but he was also shy. He didn’t have many friends, but he had a couple of good friends in middle school. I do know that as he got older he was bullied and that continued into his high school career.
I am not saying that is what made him act out, but I know it was a factor. I am sure there is so much more that we will never fully understand that contributed to Orlando feeling like he had no other option than to do what he did. According to the police reports, he tried to commit suicide multiple times. He must have been hurting so badly and he clearly felt as if he had no one.
In a few short years, I went from teaching middle school to high school. There was the coronavirus, virtual teaching, and then moving from one building to another. When Collegiate School of Medicine & Bioscience moved into the same building as Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, I had the pleasure of seeing many of my former middle school students at different events shared by both schools. These were always happy meetings, and I was always on the lookout for more of my former middle school babies. I never imagined the scenario of events that happened on Oct. 24 would occur.
Even though I am a logical person, when I replay that morning in my mind, I keep thinking: What if, when Orlando was my student, I had said just one more kind word to him? What if I had asked him how he was doing one more time? What if I had checked on him more in seventh and eighth grade? What if I had found out he was down the hall from me attending CVPA and made a point to go talk to him? What if, what if, what if?
Could all of this have been avoided if someone like me had just done one nicer thing or reached out one more time? I won’t ever get the answer to those questions because the only person who could tell me is gone.
My heart is breaking for Orlando’s mom. I only met her once at parent-teacher conferences, and I am sure she doesn’t remember me, but I remember she wanted the very best for her son. From the reports, it sounds like she did everything she could think of to help Orlando and, unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough to save him.
She tried to do the right thing by asking the police to take his gun away. But because of Missouri’s current laws, police felt they couldn’t. That gun would be used a few short weeks later to change my life and the life of my students forever.
I do not blame Orlando. I do not blame his mom. I do not blame the police. I blame those making the laws that think it okay for a 19-year-old to own an AR-15-style rifle and a trove of 30-clip magazines. Please come tell my students, who had to see the lifeless body of an innocent teenage girl lying on the ground covered in blood as they fled the school building fearing for their lives, why anyone should own a weapon that can only be used to kill people.
And before anyone says I don’t know anything about guns, I grew up hunting. I grew up on a farm. I grew up respecting guns. They were a daily part of my life. But I never needed an AR-15 to kill a deer, a duck, a goose or a turkey. I do believe in a person’s right to own a gun, but if you aren’t a police officer or in the military, you have no reason to own an assault rifle at age 19.
Missouri needs a red-flag law, otherwise known as an “extreme-risk protection order” law. It prevents individuals who show signs of being a threat to themselves or others from purchasing or possessing any kind of firearm. It would provide safeguards and procedures to ensure that no firearm is removed without due process while helping to prevent tragedies like the school shooting that happened here in St. Louis.
Fixing gun laws won’t solve everything. It wouldn’t give back the lives of those lost on Oct. 24. It wouldn’t take away the trauma my colleagues, my students or I will have to live with for the rest of our lives. But it might prevent anyone else from experiencing these same events. It might prevent another teenager or teacher from dying. And that alone is worth changing the laws.
Do you think the Missouri legislature will change the law? Do you think they will act to prevent future shootings?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good morning Diane and everyone,
There are a few issues here. I will deal with the bullying issue. It’s not new. When I was in 6th grade, I was physically bullied. The principal did nothing. My mother told him that she would be giving her daughter permission to physically fight if she had to (My mother had to fight her way to school every day because she was bullied for being poor.) The principal was shocked and said that my mother couldn’t do such a thing. She replied, “Just watch me.” Many teachers know that students are bullied and NOTHING happens to the bully because they have a “right” to an education or the administrators don’t want to do anything. Teachers tell administration many times about things they see going on in school with students and a lot of times, nothing is ever done. Students have problems that go way beyond the teacher’s range of action. So teachers, stop beating yourselves up! Do your job. Report what you see. But you can’t be responsible for the world’s problems. Kind words and smiles are nice but it won’t solve this problem. It is bigger than teachers. It’s an institutional problem and a societal problem where guns are concerned.
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These assault rifles should be banned and the laws should be tightened. If a parent calls the police and asks them to take the gun from her son, they should listen to her for pity’s sake. But of course Missouri is a lax gun law state.
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All of the churn and burn that public schools have been through have left many schools in worse shape, particularly in poor neighborhoods. In addition to charter drain, many districts have seen their budgets slashed and student support services dwindle. The services of guidance counselors, school psychologists, social workers and even school nurses have been reduced and in some cases eliminated. With fewer resources available, more students will inevitably fall through the cracks. Schools seem to come up with funds for technology and more testing, but services that support health and well-being end up on the chopping block, even after a devastating, traumatizing pandemic. This country has its priorities mixed up.
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CVPA is a magnet school in a solidly middle class neighborhood next to a very nice park, Tower Grove Park.
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THIS
Stop beating yourselves up!
Expectations 101
Unmet expectations have been known
to be the source of anguish,
discomfort, distress, angst,
on and on.
You can’t “change the winds”
BUT you can “set your sails”.
Set your sails, evaluate your
expectations. Are they realistic?
What is your pretense of control?
Do you think you have a “right” to
control?
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By now, it is apparent to me that the the money behind the MAGA RINO Republican Party has been hell-bound for more than 70 years, to turn the United States into an insane, libertarian, theofascist, ignorant, hate-filled, anti-science, destructive, dystopian nightmare.
Those theofascists can’t achieve their goals as long as we have OUR public schools teaching the vast majority of children how to think critically and logically so we can continue to solve problems from a fact based foundation.
Theofascists NEED an easily controlled population and that’s not going to happen as long as OUR public schools are still OURs, instead of controlled by them.
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This will continue until public education returns to its initial roots……allowing children to become human in the world while teaching them the basic needs to survive/thrive/live within society. As long as the system sees children as nothing more than data points/test scores, the children will have their psychological and physical needs left unmet and they will be unhappy. This competitiveness in schools is harming children. Rate them, rank them and trot them out like show ponies at the state fair……there is only 1 Blue ribbon winner and all the rest are losers.
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Amen!
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It’s not as simple as blaming the conditions: Consider District necessary spending priority choices, cities hands off education (except to perpetuate charters), and where shootings occur.
Whether urban schools are funded less well or not from suburban and rural, the dollars are distributed with different priorities, necessarily and urban class size suffers.
Urban schools have a much greater need for school counselors, social workers, home-school liaisons, community school (before and after wrap around services) coordinators, monitors and security. And, add pre-school!
If the state (see Missouri) does not provide funding for these support personnel, it’s a no-win choice. Support services or class size.
Generally city governments have a mindset that education is not their job. Thank goodness, it’s not, but they lump tremendous need and demand for social services, mental health, school-based security, employee childcare and preschool with “education.” (And, few people want to “defund” the police – that’s a GOP slam tactic – – the outspoken want more mental health and social services and training for policemen).
The data show differences in motivation of shootings by location – – but one significant point is that URBAN SCHOOLS are less prone to school shootings INSIDE schools. Kids in cities witness and are exposed to more shootings around schools and in some neighborhoods, but not IN schools.
INSIDE urban schools are generally a safe space for students. There are fights and other heavy situations – but not guns and not shootings.
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Once again, probably late to the party, but my 2 cents:
until assault weapons are federally banned (when pigs fly), we need to recognize students’ needs & address them like never before. In setting up our programming this year, our IL Learning Disabilities Assn. pinpointed an urgency to have some sort of presentation, such as the one resulting: “Can Current Behavior of Children Foretell Future Violence: Warning Signs to Watch for in Children.” The obvious problem(s) are pinpointed/examined in a book that ALL educators/psychologists/counselors/social workers (ESPECIALLY school & state superintendents, administrators {special ed. directors/supervisors in particular} & school boards) MUST read–“Why Meadow Died: the People & Policies That Created the Parkland Shooter & Endanger American Students” by Meadow’s father, Andrew, & Max Eden (yes, Max was at the American Enterprise Institute). There are so many missteps made by the school district to mention, which is why this book is a must-read.
Spend the money on the STUDENTS & NOT on tests. &, most memorable quote (from a teacher), “If any good comes out of (the Parkland shooting), I hope it’s that the district finally gets rid of Response to Intervention.”
Yes, the useless (better word: harmful) R.T.I., a maze of NON responses to problems that need to be addressed (those who were/have been teachers for at least the last 14 or so years know what I’m talking about).
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