Hey everyone, just to give an update on how things are going, the senators in New Mexico are coming to the school to ask us how we feel about the administration following the shooting and I wrote and plan to read this.... let me know what you guys think.
April 30, 2018
To anyone interested in Aztec High School following the shooting,
We appreciate the administration for all that they did on December 7th to make us as safe as they could. At this time we have some concerns with how the administration has acted in the months following the shooting. While many staff members have done an excellent job for the students after the shooting by being a mentor, a leader, and a friend, some situations have been handled inappropriately. We the students writing this letter would like to share some of our concerns about the administration in the last several months after the shooting.
This past month, the students at AHS have been completing PARCC testing. Many of the staff have been supervising the students as they test. When a teacher of a class is assigned to supervise a test, their classrooms are supposed to have substitutes to watch those students in classes not currently testing. What we find very disturbing is that the administrators failed to cover every class. Administrators pulled teachers out of class to supervise a test and did not cover every class needing a substitute. It is very inappropriate that a mere four months after the shooting, the administration has in some instances left kids unattended. One particular science class had no supervision for two hours in a room where students have access to toxic and corrosive chemicals; these students certainly needed adult supervision. Aside from that, if there were another emergency, the students in these classes wouldn’t be safe or even accounted for. It is very frustrating and upsetting that our classmates, friends, and siblings aren’t accounted for by the administration due to their inability to put teachers in classrooms.
Everyone is aware of the “student walk-out” movement that occurred throughout the nation recently. It was a way for students in America to peacefully protest their lack of safety in schools if they choose. Instead of allowing the walkout, AHS administration set up an assembly to reunite the students and staff. Near the end of the assembly, an administrator began playing music for the students and played the song “Pumped Up Kicks”. For those unfamiliar, the song is about a shooting from the point-of-view of the shooter as he guns down kids. The lyrics are genuinely demented and upsetting, revolving around the shooter’s mindset and internal dialogue as he is killing the kids. The administration was likely unaware of the song’s subject matter, but that doesn’t make it any less harmful. There is no excuse for this; it is incredibly thoughtless and very disrespectful to the students who lost their lives here. It is incredibly inappropriate, careless, and hurtful that the administration would let this happen and not even formally apologize to the students as a whole. It makes us wonder if the administration even understands how awful and unacceptable this was.
Another obvious issue is that students still don’t feel safe. To be honest, they have no reason to feel safe. Simply put, the security guards aren’t equipped to stop a shooter, even with so much as a taser. There is absolutely no way that the guards could be capable of stopping another shooter. This isn’t meant to be an insult to the guards: we are grateful that they are willing to put themselves in harms way for us. The fact is, though, if another shooting were to happen here, the outcome would be no different; more than likely, it would be worse.
Another concern we have is the manner in which dress code violations are addressed and prioritized over basic safety. In the same week that classes were without teachers due to PARCC testing, an administrator went out of their way to track down a student for wearing a hat in a building. This administrator then humiliated a girl in front of the entire class for a minor dress code violation. Rather than having an appropriate conversation in private, this administrator showed no regard for this girl’s privacy and dignity. These are dress code violations and should certainly be addressed, but should be done so with respect to the students. We just don’t understand why a more trivial issue like dress code is aggressively enforced, yet putting teachers in classrooms during testing and appropriately running an assembly are simple tasks they cannot accomplish.
To be clear, we appreciate all of the effort the administration has put into educating and protecting us, but the aforementioned issues need to be addressed and corrected. All of these issues we have described share a common theme: there is a genuine disrespect and disconnect between the administrators and the students. This is evident with the incident at the assembly when students were pulled out of class while the administration played a song that glorifies the murder of students by a shooter. This is doubly evident with the administration failing to fulfil the basic safety condition of putting a teacher in a classroom at all times. This is triply evident with administrators’ inappropriate and disrespectful prioritization of the dress code over these far more basic and important issues. Just to make sure we are fully emphasizing this, it needs to be understood how shocking and inappropriate it is for someone who is supposed to be a leader of the school to play “Pumped Up Kicks” for the students at the assembly, or how infuriating it is that the dress code is rabidly enforced, but the need to protect the children here isn’t. In conclusion, students are hurt, unsafe, and furious because of how poorly AHS has been run in these months following the events on December 7th.
Sincerely,
