Dear Superintendent Kincannon, Board President Stephanie Korteweg, Angelo Ochoa, Jonathan Grant, Emily Iazzetti, and José Vidaña-
Last month, Waco ISD parents received a phone call that there was an active shooter threat on Waco High campus and 3 surrounding campuses were also locked down. Students and teachers at Waco High went through a terrifying few hours, not knowing if the threat was real, many of them hiding anywhere they could- including away from classroom windows and protected by brick and concrete walls.
Yet, the August 25, 2022 Board meeting, you six stood staunchly in opposition to the advice of Waco PD's Commander Jared Wallace, who urged the Board to reconsider the unsafe design of the new Waco High, Tennyson Middle, and Carver-Indian Spring campuses. Thanks to the work of Trustees Keith Guillory (Waco PD Fire Marshall and trained law enforcement officer) and Jeremy Davis (a former WISD Behavior Specialist and Director of Mentor Waco), you were able to receive a report from the one person in Waco PD who is specifically tasked with training the public in surviving instances of an active shooter. What's more, Commander Wallace received credentials from the very agencies referenced in Mr. Ochoa's follow-up letter to the Waco Tribune where he insisted the architects were the experts. (
https://wacotrib.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/waco-police-to-train-public-in-surviving-active-shooter-situations/article_47d532be-0936-11ed-a4ca-4f883d3e7d6c.html).
Yet, you presumptuously insisted we must trust the architects who are not safety experts but only consult with safety experts like Commander Wallace. You are putting full trust in a firm that is making millions of dollars from this design that is nothing more than a copy cat of a Belton ISD High School - the district our Superintendent hailed from that is vastly different than our own.
Did anyone consider how the students and teachers in WISD feel about this design? How will they focus? Does it make them feel safe? Do they even feel safe right now?
It is not lost on us that once here, Dr. Kincannon, you replaced most of our Admin team and subsequently began advocating for the largest bond option ($355,000,000) at the expense of tax payers, in a city with a 28% poverty rate, still recovering from the economic impact of the pandemic. You claim that curriculum and instruction is your priority- which is the same excuse you made when you justified removing our critical behavior staff members- and for which we are now seeing the detrimental consequences of after a riot last week where dozens of students were suspended. You voted to approve a budget expense for ballistic shields for our WISD police, because you agree the risk of violence is high and want all our PD to return home safely to their families... But what about our students and staff?
And that takes us full circle, back to the beginning: we cannot install non-bulletproof glass interior classroom walls when you have done everything to destabilize the socio-emotional well-being of our students thus making our campuses more susceptible to violent acts, like active shooters. Since we want to talk about experts, here's an article worth reading and heeding before our city is the next hashtag- "Experts Say We Can Prevent School Shootings."
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/26/1101571302/what-schools-can-do-to-prevent-school-shootings
The families of Waco ISD and the greater Waco community urges you to thoughtfully consider how this will look and feel when you watch videos of students being gunned down through your aesthetically pleasing glass walls and their blood is on your hands.
Sincerely,
