Parents and teachers from Manhattan Beach Middle School are demanding accountability after a student brought a gun to school.
On March 19, a student was discovered with an unloaded firearm in their backpack. In the aftermath, district officials acknowledged the seriousness of the incident and said they followed proper safety protocols by immediately calling the Manhattan Beach Police to search the campus and the nearby park.
But some teachers and parents are upset at what they call a lack of transparency and communication.
“The obvious issue is why a shelter-in-place was not called the minute a gun was found in a student’s backpack on campus,” one woman said during the latest school board meeting. “It would have been impossible to confirm the situation was contained so quickly as to make a shelter-in-place unnecessary. It takes time to check if a gun is unloaded.”
Some school staff also say they weren’t told about the incident until after 8 p.m. on March 19, at least six hours after the gun was found.
“[We were] purposefully kept in the dark until 8 p.m. to be told there was a gun in our workplace and that a child wanted to use it against another student,” a teacher said. “Teachers feel that negative press and PR was the main reason driving the decision-making that Wednesday, and this is shameful.”
Want to get caught up on what's happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
A town hall meeting with MBMS parents will be held at 5 p.m. Monday to discuss possible changes to safety protocols.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok