Salem-Keizer Public Schools leaders are considering installing weapons detectors in all middle and high schools as an added layer of security, moving up a consideration by district officials that started back in the fall.
Natalie Pate / OPB
Superintendent Andrea Castañeda began her comments at Tuesday night’s Salem-Keizer school board meeting by quoting a line from a poem: “Do the people you claim, claim you?”
Castañeda spoke with emotion and called for action after a 16-year-old was fatally shot and two other teens were wounded at a park last Thursday afternoon. A fellow student has been charged.
“While the circumstances of what happened in [Bush’s] Pasture Park matter, we claim our Salem-Keizer students,” Castañeda said Tuesday, simultaneously acknowledging an ongoing criminal investigation and the broader importance of accepting people in our communities.
“We claim Roberto, we claim Damien, we claim Jose, we claim Nathaniel. They are part of us — whatever else happened — they are part of us.”
The shooting, subsequent lockdowns at South Salem High School and McKinley Elementary School, rumors, threats and lasting trauma of the incidents have been ever-present in the Salem area this past week.
Castañeda spoke to families during a community forum Monday night. Additional counselors have been available to staff and students. And though the violence and threats appear to have passed, Castañeda said the community is “still riding out waves of pain.”
Castañeda shared her prior experience in a district in another state that experienced a school shooting.
“At the conclusion of that tragic and terrible event, we had to confront the same question over and over: What did we miss? What could we have done differently? How were we incomplete or wrong?” she said. “And I will tell you that there are hundreds of answers to those questions when you have to ask them after a death in a school.”
Castañeda said that same kind of reflection is needed now in Salem, adding that the moment “demands more than hope and prayers.”
“The question we have to urgently confront now as a community is: ‘What kind of action does it demand?’” she said.
At this point, South Salem students are still allowed off campus during lunch, but Bush’s Pasture Park, a common spot for groups of students on breaks, is off-limits.
The district is considering installing weapons detectors in all middle and high schools as an added layer of security, moving up a consideration by district leaders that started back in the fall.
These would be in addition to the nationally recognized threat prevention system that Salem-Keizer already implements. The district already bans students, staff, parents, volunteers and other visitors from having weapons on campus, including those carried by people with concealed weapon permits.
A parent during public testimony Tuesday night also pushed for discussion on a security measure that’s likely to come up more in the near future— whether the district should bring back school resource officers.
Castañeda said she brought up the possibility of weapons detectors with great ambivalence, adding that “this not what we want for our schools.”
“Schools are precious, in part, because more people walk through the doors of schools every day than any other institution in our community,” she said. “We want those doors to be open because the spirit of our schools is open.”
Nonetheless, Castañeda acknowledged that schools are part of a community in which guns are easier to acquire now — including by young people — and youth are using them, she said, at higher rates.
District officials have done two site visits in Oregon and California since the fall to see weapons detectors in use. The district is planning more community discussions in the coming weeks.
Castañeda said the process is moving more quickly than the district originally anticipated.
“As part of our initial review, we did plan an incremental and thoughtful way to start these conversations with the community. But sometimes events bring conversations to us before we’re ready,” she said.
“That’s what happened to our community over the course of the last seven days. I think that the key question now is how we move together.”
Latinos Unidos Siempre, a youth advocacy organization in Salem, voiced their disappointment with Castañeda’s remarks. Instead of students having time to grieve, the group argues they now have to fight against discriminatory tactics in their local schools.
“In our time of mourning, we need mental health resources and other support in our schools,” the group’s leaders posted on Instagram. “The fact that Andrea Castañeda has decided to use this vulnerable time to introduce the idea of metal detectors, which have been proven to be harmful for Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth, shows that our grief is being taken advantage of.”
They cited a school-to-prison pipeline report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, saying police get more involved and students graduate at lower rates in schools with permanent metal detectors in them. The report also includes a 2004-2005 analysis in which high schools with permanent metal detectors issued 48% more suspensions than schools without metal detectors.
“As students of color in the Salem-Keizer School District, we do not support metal detectors or [school resource officers] in our schools,” LUS leaders wrote.
Testifiers from the teachers union on Tuesday, and Latinos Unidos Siempre leaders after, critiqued Castañeda for actively avoiding bargaining updates in her public report. They argue students experiencing grief need better-resourced schools and staff for moments like this.
Castañeda said during the meeting that she was not commenting on ongoing bargaining “in light of the pain that I know our community is feeling.”