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BY MICHAEL OLOHAN
OF PASCACK PRESS
Faced with a frightening reality of frequent shootings and deaths in schools throughout America, an association of Bergen County school administrators is calling for state and national legislators to listen to students’ voices demanding legislative action to help prevent future tragedies.
“We encourage you to continue to use your voices to call for change. While we often view you as the leaders of tomorrow, you are also leading us today,” states the two-page letter posted online Feb. 26 by the Bergen County Association of School Administrators.
Harrington Park Superintendent Adam Fried, association president, said the letter supports students and their calls for action against gun violence.
Dumont threat
On Monday, Feb. 26, a 15-year-old student at Dumont High School was taken into custody after allegedly making a threat to “shoot up the school,” according to Dumont Police Chief Michael Conner.
The high school was placed on lockdown for several hours. Police later recovered a rifle at the student’s home. As of last Tuesday, no charges had been filed, according to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.
On Tuesday, when Dumont High School reopened, officers were positioned in patrol cars near the school as students entered the building. Extra officers were also in the school.
A ‘moral obligation’
“We’re not wading into the water of anything political, we’re saying these things deserve discussion. We always talk about how we’re raising the next group of leaders here. Well, this is an opportunity to listen to our leaders,” said Fried on Feb. 27.
“This [Florida] shooting, as well as so many other shootings, for us it’s a call for action. It is our moral obligation to [support students]. It’s who we are as school leaders,” Fried said.
Fried said he hopes students have a “long-term conversation, and at minimum a discussion to discuss and debate the topics. Let’s get everything on the table and let’s have the conversations so we can come out unified as one.”
Fried said that a democracy requires debate, and though the topic is divisive and emotional, “we should always consider, discuss and debate” to address difficult issues.
Nationwide conversation
Following the Feb. 14 killings of 17 people, including 15 students, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the administrators’ letter notes that “America’s students, long the victim of these attacks, have become a leading voice in the need for a national conversation and action regarding gun violence.
“It would be an error to dismiss their loud, collective and clear voice. Their demand is simple: that our elected officials, by virtue of the ethical and moral demands of their positions, take this issue seriously and address it in a substantive way,” states the letter.
The Bergen County Association of School Administrators, an organization comprised of superintendents and central office personnel in 73 public districts and three charter schools, helps to educate and supervise 133,000 students countywide.
“We join their voices in recognizing that this moment must not pass without action. To our students, know that we support, love and care for you and will continue to do all that we can, in partnership with law enforcement, to keep you safe. As we do that, we encourage you to use your voices to call for change,” states the letter.
Students ‘driving discussion’
Emerson Schools Superintendent Brian Gatens, association vice president, said via email that “it is the voice of the students that are driving [nationwide] discussion… and students can continue to make contact with their respective legislators to push for a policy solution to this issue as well as keep the most recent school shooting in the public eye.”
Gatens said the association’s support for students derived from “both a desire to support students during this time and to express our collective frustration at the lack of real and substantive action.”
Gatens said the association’s letter is “another voice calling for our legislators to address this issue.”
He said the association’s viewpoint should matter as “we’re the people who have to console grieving communities, ensure the safety of our students and schools, work with the general public, and manage the ongoing impact of this on the culture of our schools.”
‘Listen to them’
The letter notes students have called for consideration of: a reasoned, fact-based comprehensive discussion of gun control, including limiting access to assault weapons; a nationwide background check system; and wide-reaching and easily-accessible mental health services in school and society.
Our students’ voices are powerful, thoughtful and intelligent, and yet are too often dismissed by adults as they are sometimes deemed too simplistic and not based on reality and life experience. Clearly this is not the case as young people, many still in their early years of high school, have spoken and led with an impressive moral clarity,” states the association.
The letter ends with a message to public officials: “Follow the ethical and moral mandate to keep our children and teachers safe. Listen to their pleas. Listen to their wisdom. Listen to them. Take action.”