Education

Rogers Park parents upset with Anchorage district’s response to gun in classroom

Rogers Park Elementary parents believe the Anchorage School District is using federal student privacy laws to keep them from learning more about an incident last month in which a first-grader brought a loaded gun to school.

“We parents have gotten literally zero information out of the school district,” Chris Kottra told the Anchorage School Board on Monday.

Kottra was joined by a half-dozen parents at the meeting, where they aired a list of grievances with the district’s handling of the Feb. 14 incident. Among their claims are that parents were not adequately notified about the seriousness of the incident on the day it happened; that the district has failed to communicate information to parents since; and that the district has attempted to minimize the severity of the incident.

“This was a life-threatening danger our children were put in,” Kottra said.

Official details about the case are scarce. According to the Anchorage Police Department, a loaded handgun was found in a student’s backpack at around 9 a.m. Feb. 14. The department hasn’t said much else about the case, other than to say the investigation is ongoing. School district officials have refused to comment, citing student confidentiality laws.

Parent Jessica Falke said she received an email from the district on the afternoon of the incident saying a weapon had been brought to school but “at no time were our children were in danger.” Falke said she didn’t learn the weapon was a loaded gun until she read media reports the next day and didn’t find out the gun was actually in her child’s classroom until Monday.

“ASD has set a bad precedent that I don’t deserve to know,” she said.

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Parents sent a letter to board members and district staff before Monday’s meeting detailing their frustrations. According to the parents, the first-grader who brought the gun to school had already demonstrated discipline problems before the gun was found in Kat Johnson’s combined kindergarten/first grade classroom. Parents don’t want the boy to return to Rogers Park and are upset about the fact they aren’t being kept in the loop about any potential discipline.

“Even without going into details about the individual student who possessed the handgun, ASD has declined to provide such general information as how deliberation will occur, potential outcomes, timeline, and how parents affected can participate,” reads the letter, which was sent by 28 Rogers Park parents.

The letter said parents also want the district to revise its policy on parental notifications about potentially dangerous classroom events and suggested the district form a committee to look into the issue.

“We understand that ASD is required by law to provide confidentiality to students, however we think the implementation of such policies is not appropriately nuanced and is being applied far too broadly and without proper consideration for the legitimate rights of parents to know in detail what is happening in classrooms that affect the safety of our children,” they wrote.

ASD superintendent Deena Bishop said she feels for parents, but stressed that the district’s hands are often tied by the Family Education Rights Privacy Act, which she said bars the district from releasing information that could potentially identify a child under the age of 18.

“If I was a parent in that classroom, my position would be different,” Bishop said.

However, by releasing details about the incident, she argued the district would potentially violate federal law.

“It doesn’t spell out particular things about a weapon in school or things like that. What it does is says if ... that record could identify that student, you cannot release the information,” she said.

Even details such as the classroom where the incident happened, she said, would be potentially compromising the student’s identity.

“You heard today from testimony the narrowed classroom for which that gun was in and that child is identified in that classroom,” she said.

Bishop said parents should not have found out the weapon was actually a handgun and put the blame for people finding out that fact through the news on the police department.

“They have fully shared and taken the responsibility for the communication. We do have an understanding not to release detailed information immediately, but when they did release it they should have let us know first so that we could notify our parents,” she said.

After the meeting, Kottra said the district’s response to the situation seems to have been based more on saving face than safety.

“They just seem to want to minimize this,” said Kottra, who called the district’s response “arrogant and bureaucratic.”

“It feels like they’re hiding behind confidentiality.”

Matt Tunseth

Matt Tunseth is a former reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and former editor of the Alaska Star.

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