RICHFIELD, Minn. — A small memorial still sits outside the front entrance of the District 287 South Education Center in Richfield, four months after a deadly shooting that involved students.
"It feels like a year unfulfilled," said Sandra Lewandowski, superintendent of District 287. "It's obviously not the way any leader wants to leave."
After 50 years in education, and 16 years leading District 287, Lewandowski imagined her retirement year differently.
"It is everybody's worst nightmare," she said. "A young man died in front of the school."
To somehow make matters even worse, the deadly shooting on Feb. 1 was a nightmare she saw coming. Long before the pandemic heightened public awareness to the youth mental health crisis, Lewandowski was sounding the alarm about what she was seeing.
Intermediate District 287 has long provided specialized learning services for 11 metro-area districts. The schools and classes provide everything from career and technical training to intensive special education and alternative learning.
In the last decade, Lewandowski says the district has taken in kids with increasingly difficult behavioral issues and mental health needs.
"It's important to understand that the students coming through our doors are going in and out of residential treatment — or in and out of ERs — all the time," she said. "It's a rare week that we aren't sending kids to emergency rooms. To be very specific, that can include suicide ideation, it can have homicidal tendencies, and they're coming back to school without having been served. What you have here, happening in our district, is we are the provider to kids who others won't serve.
"I just looked in my file this morning; my earliest documented letter to a governor was Governor Dayton in 2013, expressing this very concern. Most of my testimony — and most of my documentation to policy makers — often ended with, 'I appear today because, God forbid something terrible happen, I don't want to look back and say I didn't tell anybody.'"
Even after something terrible did happen this year, Lewandowski kept speaking up.
In May, she testified at the Capitol in support of an education bill, that would provide $15 million in additional mental health support for the kind of special education programs District 287 provides.
"I can tell you, all of the students involved in that shooting have had unmet needs for many years," Lewandowski said during the legislative hearing on May 9th. "I hope no other Minnesota school district has a similar tragedy, but it is my belief we are a canary in the coal mine. If we do not provide children with the trauma response and the mental health services they so desperately need, there will be more tragic outcomes."
Despite her plea, the session ended without an agreement.
"I remember driving away from the Capitol thinking, 'If this doesn't compel action, what would?'" Lewandowski said. "I hope that there will be a special session and I hope that there will be a realization that there is an urgent need. Figures go as high as 40-50% of our kids in this state are suffering right now from mental health issues. If this were a flood or this were a forest fire, we would be rushing to help."
Instead, images of kids rushing out of schools continue to mark school shootings, like the one that just unfolded in Texas.
Sandy says school leaders across the country will continue to take the limited steps they can to safeguard on their own.
"We'll be installing a weapons detection system, over the course of the summer," she said. "We're also focusing on trauma response strategies and race equity work and other things backed by research."
But she says those larger efforts can't be accomplished without support.
Lewandowski: "My immediate question to those policy makers is: What are you going to do to help solve this right now?"
Kent Erdahl: "You're about to step away from this job. It doesn't sound like you're stepping away from this issue."
Lewandowski: "Certainly, I would do anything I could in my retirement to advance this cause."
Erdahl: "You can't just walk away."
Lewandowski: "That's right. I will always be there."
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