AUSTIN (KXAN) — Parents of students at Barton Hills Elementary School met with city and school district leaders Friday to talk about what’s being done to address failures in communication after the suspect of a shooting in Zilker Park ended up near the school.
“Parents are rightfully concerned, frustrated, angry that they didn’t get the right communication about keeping their kids at home and really putting them in harms way, and that’s something that can never happen again,” Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter said. The elementary school is in his district.
The shooting happened before school started — around 4 a.m. — at Zilker Park, less than a five-minute drive from the elementary school. At roughly 5:30 a.m., a shelter-in-place notification was sent out by APD via Warn Central Texas, and that shelter in place was lifted around an hour later, at 6:30 a.m.
But the suspect wasn’t located by APD near the school until a little before 8 a.m., after students had made their way in. You can read the exact timeline of events here.
“We had a breakdown in our communications where we told everybody to shelter in place but then incorrectly told them that it was all clear. And then had a communication to avoid the area, but not necessarily this area,” Alter said.
The meeting on Friday — at times — got heated. At least one parent asked city, APD and district leadership to resign.
“Guys, this wasn’t a minor mistake, this was a colossal failure. You put hundreds of people’s lives at risk. You put my 9-year-old son’s life at risk,” one parent said. “The only reason we are standing here talking about a near miss and not a massive tragedy is luck.”
“I understand where you’re coming from, I understand your frustration, I truly do, but I am here. We are here to make things right, we are here to change things that need to be changed, systems that need to be changed. It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen under my watch. As we move forward, whatever resources I have to put toward that to make it happen, I promise you here today it’s going to happen,” Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis responded.
Other parents asked for AISD to look at its policy around who makes the call to secure a school; some wanted to know how frequently the school district has received information from APD and gone against police recommendations, and many asked for better communication between the city and school district.
“I would like to see accountability from people who made poor decisions step up and speak to their decisions, I would like to see process change, communication change and just all around accountability,” Trey Tschoepe, the parent of a Barton Hills first grader, said.
Alter said overall, the city is doing its own internal reviews and also working with AISD to ensure communication is faster and more effective between the two entities. Alter says the city is already changing some policies, especially around shelter-in-place notifications, but also said the same leaders will come back to community members in several months to communicate all of the changes made and see if there’s anything parents still need to see.
He said when it comes to shelter-in-place notifications, the city needs to err on the side of caution and leave those active until a situation is fully resolved, as well as run those decisions further up the chain of command.
“I mean, I’m a parent of kids in elementary school. I can’t even begin to comprehend the fear that went into that moment where all of a sudden they realized they might have sent their child out into harm’s way, and that happened here,” Alter said.
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