AURORA | The students, teachers and administrators at the Aurora Public Schools district won’t be alone as they work to process a tragedy.
That was a major theme at a press conference held Aug. 2 at the district’s administration building, where APS Superintendent John Barry announced a $50,000 federal grant to hire school psychologists for students and spoke about the impact of the July 20 shootings at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater. Barry was joined by Gateway High School Principal Bill Hedges and Paris Elementary School Principal Lisa Jones, as well as state Reps. Nancy Todd and Su Ryden.
During a brief presentation, Barry detailed the district’s “recovery plan,” an itemized approach that started in the moments immediately after the shooting and is set to continue into the coming school year.
“The messages this morning are very simple,” Barry said. “Our schools are safe, we have a plan and our students, families and staff are not alone.”
From added counselors to psychologists to tighter security at buildings across the district, the events of July 20 will have an immediate effect on the 2012-13 school year at APS. As the district continues to operate under the pressure of continued budget cuts from the state level, Barry said they’ll dip into the emergency fund in order to pay for additional staff, added security and at least one extra mental health professional at every high school.
“We’ll have a number (of psychologists) that can float around between middle schools and the same thing for elementary. The issue here is that we’ll gauge it as it goes along,” Barry said. “This is why emergency funds are needed. This is why we need to have some onetime money … This is why this is really a challenge for us with all of these budget cuts that we have gone through.”
The impact of the July 20 shootings was especially profound for APS, the sixth largest district in the state. AJ Boik, a recent graduate of Gateway High School, was among the 12 casualties. According to district officials, about 50 APS students were in different auditoriums at the theater on the night of the attack, including theater No. 9 where the fatal shooting occurred. In the days following the shootings, Gateway, Aurora Central, Rangeview and Hinkley high schools opened their doors to victims, displaced residents and other community members.
That immediacy has left a deep impact as teachers, administrators and staff prepare for the first day of school Aug. 6.
“Obviously, Gateway High School was quite impacted,” Hedges said. “It’s important for us, I think, right from the beginning … is give (students) an opportunity, but not require them to talk about it.”
As part of the district’s response plan, psychologists and counselors will be on call during enrollment and registration. Cincinnati-based pediatric specialists Dr. David Schonfeld and Daniel Nelson arrived in the days following the shooting to offer guidance to administration members. What’s more, departments across APS have reached out to students and family members who were at the theater July 20.
“I personally have called those who were directly impacted … and we will continue to reach out to every single person who was in the theater that night, whether they were injured or not,” Barry said. “We are in the process of bringing more psychologists and counselors on call while registration and enrollment is ongoing.”
That proximity brought an immediate and overwhelming show of support in the days following the attack, including a call from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan, who visited the district’s Vista PEAK campus in February, will also prepare a podcast for students and teachers that will run at the beginning of the school year.
“He certainly conveyed his condolences for the city, but he (also) offered help, and it was substantive,” Barry said, adding that Duncan offered grants worth at least $50,000. “We’re going to have to try to bring in people that we’re going to have to pay for. For instance, we are going to hire subs for every one of our subs to be a roving sub,” Barry added, explaining that the substitutes will be on call to fill in for any teacher who may feel overwhelmed.
These are the first steps for a grieving process that may span the entire school year, Barry said. It’s a lesson Barry has drawn from his experience in the Air Force (he was in the Pentagon during the attacks on 9/11) and his past role as the lead investigator of the Columbia shuttle disaster. The true toll of the attacks will take different forms for the thousands at APS, he said.
“People react differently,” Barry said. “Some are directly impacted. Some are personally impacted. Everybody has a different way of reacting … Some will actually be stronger because of it. That’s what we’re going to strive for as we move forward.”
Anything to justify blowing more money….like you need more psychologists…like buying a friend to listen to you…all you need is yourselves.
Look at this guy ….looks like a talking walrus.
OH….one other thing …him having his mouth open in the picture don’t help his image…it’s like he’s catching flies.
At the risk of releasing my inner curmudgeon, I am going to take Aurora Mental Health’s advise and give myself permission to feel whatever comes up and to talk about that.
I would hope Supreintendent Barry, a man with experiance in dealing with horrific acts, would reasure APS students that they need not feel guilt over still feeling perfectly safe, that it is not necessary to feel directly impacted by the isolated act of one deranged person, it is reasonable to place the blame on the shooter and not on the availabiltiy of guns, and that psychologists and councilers are not the only answer.
Having grown up in the fifties, when you could buy an M-1 carbine through the mail for fifteen dollars, go to a grange to pick up a free british Enfield rifle in support of a milk boycott, or as a teenager, walk into a hardware store to buy a revolver and ammunition when the only background check was a call to your parents; it would seem that guns were much more readaly available than they are today and yet the first time I ever heard of a horrific shooting by an individual was the Texas Tower Shooter in the mid sixties.
This time period may be the influance that has me clinging to God and guns. I would hope that the APS psychologist, councilers and staff would inform students that for many, faith, a belief in a supreme being can be a source of comfort, lead to acceptance and to forgivness. That nowis not the time to keep prayer and God from the class room.
My god…would you put a sock in it.
It’s thinking like yours that has made this nation and world the place it is today. ‘we are putting counselors and phychologists on call in all of our public schools’ when simply saying what Capitecensi said above. Allow the goodness of human nature to overwhelm the deranged, counsel those people, don’t allow them among normal children and society (*as we do today). Make our country again, what it was in the 50’s, kind and gentler, not violent and brash.