25 years after Columbine shooting, local administrators reflect on seismic shift for school safety

Apr. 20—Louis Lepley said he sat "numb" on April 20, 1999, as the shocking news of a Colorado high school shooting was broadcast into his living room.

Even then, terrible, violent acts weren't uncommon nationwide, the North Star School District superintendent said.

"But until that day, I thought there was a line in the sand no one would cross — that nobody would ever walk into a school to harm kids," he said.

The Columbine shooting, which happened 25 years ago Saturday, changed everything, Lepley added.

The shooting ushered in an era of ever-changing school safety and security measures nationwide, helping move schools' focus solely from reading, writing and arithmetic toward recognizing and responding to threats.

The greater tragedy is that the Columbine shooting was just the beginning, school administrators in Cambria and Somerset counties said Friday.

But if there's one silver lining, it's that schools, the region as a whole and much of the nation are far more conscious about the importance of mental health and ways to address it, Lepley and Richland School District Superintendent Arnold Nadonley said.

'Can happen anywhere'

Greater Johnstown Assistant Superintendent Michael Dadey was a college student when 12 students and one teacher were killed by two students at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado.

"When I was a student at Greater Johnstown, there were no metal detectors. The classroom doors were always open — you just showed up each morning for school and did your thing," Dadey said.

Lepley, who worked as a member of North Star's support staff at the time, echoed similar memories.

"Back then, people were still leaving their keys in their cars after work and not locking their doors at night," he said. "Columbine was the first of many incidents ... that made us all rethink what we were doing."

Today, such rethinking is a constant process, Nadonley said.

Schools have spent decades finding ways to better protect students and staff. They include adding security cameras and automatic door locking systems, and modifying emergency plans to include "threats" and "active shooters."

Every time a major school incident draws attention nationwide, local school officials look to see how they might need to adapt those plans, he added.

"We have a police station next door to our building," Nadonley said. "But we can't ever take the approach that something like this won't happen here. It can happen anywhere."

Dadey agreed.

School shootings still generate headlines as American tragedies. But today similar acts occur across the globe, he said. People have been slain in dance clubs and department stores. Others have been gunned down on the streets of France, a village in China, and just weeks ago by insurgents at a Moscow concert hall.

There's no bulletproof method to keeping people — even children — safe from someone who is determined to lash out, Dadey said.

But today more than ever, schools, their staffers, local law enforcement officers and even students are better prepared than ever to respond, react and fight back when necessary, he said.

He said that IU8 directors meet quarterly to brainstorm ways to better protect local schools, police departments and Cambria County's Special Emergency Response Team receive and share training with faculty and staff members, and students are taught how to hide, stay calm and even distract shooters.

Recent "Stop the Bleed" first aid training has even showed students how to save lives by knowing how to help the wounded, Dadey said.

"It's about knowing how to handle a situation now," he said.

It's also about knowing how to handle problems before they become potentially violent situations, Nadonley said.

Between Columbine and the many copycats since, it took too long for the country to grasp just how much mental health matters, he said.

With the right education about support systems available, not just to students but also to communities, difficult times don't have to become deadly ones, he said.

School officials across the nation are taught to recognize now that any reason a student seems to be struggling, whether it's from a school issue or at home, is nothing to ignore — and how to better identify those signs.

"Even students can send tips anonymously," Dadey said.

Most schools have also bolstered in-house support.

Over the past two years, Cambria County took it a step further. The county launched a program using opioid settlement money to add master's degree-level mental health counselors and support staff into all of the county's public and private schools.

The objective: Putting a familiar face inside those buildings to whom students will turn if they are struggling — or if a classmate is in need — to learn how to deal with issues before they result in drug abuse or violence.

The program was designed to be funded for years to come, which will help the community raise a generation of young people who are more comfortable seeking help and support, Cambria County Drug and Alcohol Program Administrator Fred Oliveros said in a recent interview.

Nadonley praised the program, saying it's a significant piece of the puzzle.

"It's a tremendous resource," he said, "because we need to show these children that someone cares. We need to communicate and we need to listen."

But it takes a community of people — outside school walls, too — to deal with mental health, he and Lepley said.

"Even with all of the additional training, it's not always easy because some warning signs aren't as easy to pick up on," Lepley said, adding that someone who might be having trouble at home or on the bus might be venting only online or to a trusted source.

"The entire community has to know what to look for — and be paying attention too," he said.

"It's everybody's responsibility," Nadonley said.