ST PAUL, Minn. — Last Friday, just before noon Saint Paul Public Schools Superintendent Joe Gothard's phone rang.
"I was coming back to the office when I got a phone call and had to pull over to the side when I learned there had been a stabbing at Harding High School," said Gothard. "It was at that point when I heard the person on the other end that I realized how grave the situation was. This was more than an altercation or a fight at the school by the tone and some of the details they shared with me."
Within hours we learned the student — 15 year old Devin Scott — was dead and the suspect was his 16-year-old classmate.
Did something get missed? Did the St. Paul Public Schools fail Devin?
"We will have to do our due diligence when the time is right and determine what could we do to be better, be more responsive," Gothard said. "We clearly want to avoid something like this from ever happening again, and if that means that we've got to look at protocols and practices that we have in place, that's what we're going to do."
Almost immediately people began to say that the school — the district — has to bring back police officers, also known as student resource officers. The district stopped contracting with St. Paul Police to provide those in 2020.
"It gets to be a really complex thing when focusing only on SROs, but I do know that there are things, there are instances, that take place in our schools and our communities where our staff are just not equipped to deal with it," said Gothard. "It may not be SROs, and I've heard people say it's just police under another name, I understand that. What I am saying right now is that I do think they're an important part of the network for us to keep schools and communities safe."
Safety, he said, is sadly where almost all of his conversations go with district leaders everywhere.
"Locally, with my counterparts and my colleagues here in the metro and throughout the state and throughout the country, this topic comes up in every conversation we have in some way, shape or form," said Gothard.
Which topic?
"Violence, weapons and what are we going to do?"
That's the broader question, but another question people are asking is why it took so long for Harding students to return to class. Students returned Friday after one week.
"I woke up Monday morning and the first thing I thought of is that Devin's mother was not waking him up for school…that was the first thing I thought of," said Gothard. "So, going to Harding and spending time with our staff, I was watching the stages of grief right before my face and it was it was hard, it was emotional, it was necessary, but I knew then and there as I departed for my portion of the day that we were going to need more time."
Time to breath and grieve, to be able to get them back to school again.
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