Police investigating a reported shooting inside Parkside Elementary School just before classes started Monday made a startling discovery as they combed the building: On a hallway floor were three live .22-caliber bullets.
Authorities weren’t sure whether the two to three shots were from a gun or a starter pistol, but they said the shots came from the area where the bullets were found.
For Chicago school officials who have imposed strict security rules in high schools, then been forced to extend those same procedures to the system’s 489 elementary schools in the wake of a series of school shootings around the country, the discovery was particularly disturbing.
Just last fall, the school board intensified security in the elementary schools by placing off-duty police in most of the buildings and mandating that all schools use hand-held metal detectors. But just last month, an 11-year-old boy was charged with accidentally shooting a classmate in Ellington School on the West Side.
Overall, staff at the South Side school responded appropriately to ensure student safety in the chaotic aftermath of the suspected gunfire, district leaders said. But they said the apparent lapse indicated the school had failed to follow proper security procedures and called for the installation of more metal detectors, admonishing the school to use them every day.
Schools chief Paul Vallas acknowledged that local school districts have all but reached their limits on time and resources in scouring schools for guns.
“In today’s day and age, it is impossible to check every kid in every school every day–not unless you want to stop teaching,” Vallas said.As long as children have access to unsecured guns inside their homes, Vallas said, kids can smuggle a gun into school.
“The larger issue is a societal one. At the end of the day, as long as there are guns in the homes and in the community, you are going to have instances of kids trying to bring them into the schools,” Vallas said. “People with guns at home need to secure them and make sure the guns have trigger locks.”
Vallas said the board leaves it up to individual schools to decide how often to employ the metal detectors.
But he said that after a security breach, the board usually installs more sophisticated walk-through metal detectors in an elementary school and directs the staff to use them frequently.
Police said they were uncertain whether the noise reverberating throughout Parkside at 8:20 a.m. Monday, a half-hour before school started, was actual gunfire because investigators and police dogs found no weapon, bullet holes or spent shells.
Police did find three bullets on the second floor about three feet from a window, but they said they weren’t sure how or even if the bullets are connected to the reported shooting.
A cap gun found inside a school trash receptacle was later determined to be incapable of firing, police said.
“There’s a possibility that what sounded like shots fired was not actually a firearm,” Area 2 Violent Crimes Sgt. Bill Owens said.
“It could have possibly been a weapon that fires blanks or it could have been a starter pistol. There was no, as far as it being firecrackers, no paper. But there was a smell, to my understanding, of gunpowder,” Owens said.
Artero Gardner, 13, an 8th grader, said he entered the school shortly after 8 a.m. Monday through an opened back door that students enter for breakfast and that no school staff member was watching the door.
He said he was playing basketball in the second-floor gym with five other members of the Parkside Panthers when he heard the shots.
“I came in [to the gym] … and a couple seconds after, I heard gunshots,” Artero said. “My coach said for us to stay in the gym room until further notice.”
Youngsters outside the 500-student school who were lining up for breakfast or getting off buses, began running in different directions after they heard the shots. School staff members managed to shepherd some panicked kids to the playground, students said.
Miles Fugate, 9, a 3rd grader, said he was waiting inside for breakfast when he heard the shots. “I thought somebody was banging on metal. All I know is that I ran out. I ran home to my mama,” he said.
At least one parent learned of the shooting while watching television at home.
“Naturally, when they say shooting at a South Side school, you think, `Oh my God, what next!’ ” said Angela Devine, who immediately went to the school to look for her two children, ages 7 and 4. “I almost had a heart attack on my floor.”
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O’Kema Lewis, a parent and local school council president of Parkside, 6938 S. East End Ave., said there have been concerns about security for some time.
“This was an accident waiting to happen,” Lewis said. “I think we have some leadership concerns.”
But board officials found that the Parkside staff generally followed the board’s response procedures Monday, except in one case where teachers escorted three to six children from the auditorium, where they were eating breakfast, to a place outside the school, Vallas said. He said board procedures require teachers to lock the room and direct students to hide on the floor.
Vallas also ordered two walk-through metal detectors costing almost $4,000 each to be installed permanently at the front and side doors.
Parkside administrators told Vallas that they used the board’s hand-held metal detectors only “infrequently.” Vallas said he directed Parkside officials to use the metal detectors every day for random checks on students and once a week for all students entering the building.
“They should be checking stragglers who come in the early morning. I could find fault with that, but I couldn’t find anything egregious. There’s no sanctions anticipated” against any Parkside employees, Vallas said.
The Chicago school board began buying 2,000 hand-held metal detectors–costing $150 to $250 each–for all its elementary schools almost a year ago, following the deadly shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School. The board has ordered 1,000 more for grammar schools, Vallas said.
At the same time, the board recently began installing walk-through metal detectors–an established presence in every city public high school–inside about 25 elementary schools because they requested one or experienced a serious security breach, Vallas said. The board plans to install 12 more in grammar schools, he said.
“It is a sign of the times when you have to put six to eight hand-held metal detectors in [every] elementary schools and you have to purchase walk-through metal detectors for [some] elementary schools. It’s a sad state of affairs,” Vallas said.