COBB COUNTY, Ga. — At a community meeting in Powder Springs Thursday night, parents and students expressed anger and fear, describing McEachern High School as dangerous and out of control, and they demanded better security, once and for all.
Some parents broke down in tears as they spoke at the meeting about repeated incidents of threats and violence at the school.
“I was thinking, what if my child is alive or dead?” said one mother as she wept.
A student said she’s angry about all the other students she sees carrying weapons at the school without administrators doing enough to stop it.
“It shouldn’t wait ‘til somebody has to die,” she said.
The shooting last week at McEachern does not shock them because, they said, students with guns at the school and students fighting each other are routine.
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“All we are asking for is protection for our kids,” said a mother at the meeting.
As parents and students spoke, Cobb County School Board Member Leroy Tre’ Hutchins, who organized the meeting, took extensive notes and listened to what they told him about what needed to change.
Hutchins and the parents and students started a list of possible solutions, writing the ideas on big sheets of poster paper on the wall on how to make McEachern and other Cobb County schools safe.
“I mean, we have to start somewhere,” said tenth-grader Sade Brooker after the meeting.
She said she is grateful the conversation is beginning, but she’s almost ready to transfer out of McEachern - accusing school administrators of overlooking violence at the school.
“Anything bad that happens, the second that it calms down, something again is going to happen and then it’s going to be a lot worse,” she said, “I don’t feel safe. And something definitely has to change.”
Many at the meeting faulted McEachern’s principal and her staff for allowing “chaos” at the school.
An administrator from the Superintendent’s office spoke briefly but did not comment about the principal, saying only that the administration hears all the concerns expressed at the meeting.
People in the audience booed him loudly.
Parent Charlise Ivy has two children at McEachern and said after the meeting that it’s simple-- “When I send them off to school, I want to make sure that they get home safely.... I need to hear what’s the action, what are we going to do to make it safe for all of our kids out here."
Hutchins is already planning another community meeting for next week, and he gave everyone a homework assignment--to come up with “next steps” for putting a plan into action.