It was my first year as a principal, and my moment of truth had come early. This was a year before Columbine. A year before everything changed for schools and children and people like me. But the problem was there.
Looking out the window of my office I saw a young man loitering in the area where the school buses soon would be lining up at the end of the day. I knew this kid. He had been escorted off our property and off a school bus more than once. He was a junior high student with a long line of trouble with the district and the law.
A quick call to the junior high principal let me know the student had been suspended the day before. I should call the police. My secretary already had them on the line. I also told her to hold the students in their classrooms. No one was to be released until I gave the word.
Knowing his record, the police asked if he was carrying a weapon. I said I did not see one, but he had his right arm pulled inside his leather jacket, concealed. I couldn’t say for sure if he was armed or not. They said they were on their way, and someone should be sent to detain him. When you are the principal that “someone” is you. I went down to confront the young man.
I addressed him by name and told him he knew he should not be there, that the police were on their way, and he needed to wait with me. At about that time four police cars came screaming around the corner; one drove right on the playground and nosed to a stop about 10 feet from where I was standing. The police (God bless them) jumped out of either side with their weapons drawn.
The first one out said, “Put both hands where we can see them and place them on the hood of the car.”
Friends, I was so frightened, I put both hands in the air, took two steps to the car and assumed the position. The policeman gave me a withering look and said, “Not you, lady. Him.”
This incident had a good ending. There was no gun. Just bluster and threat. I was something of a joke among my fellow principals because of my response to the policeman’s order, but it was gentle ribbing. I also make no bones about being an abject coward.
As the future would show, this was no laughing matter.
I am a retired principal. I am the mother of an active principal. I am the grandmother of seven grandchildren who attend school from elementary to college. Every day I pray for them to be safe in what should be the safest of all environments. But I also work to elect leaders who will take positive action to prevent students from being shredded, literally beyond recognition, by a social malcontent’s access to an assault rifle.
Beto O’Rourke has the will and a realistic plan to deal with mass shootings. Our current governor and his Republican cohorts could have done something substantive to help this epidemic of death, but they chose not to. What is worse, they did nothing because they are afraid of their most radical, far right base. They are scared to death of their own party’s lunatic fringe.
Fear is no way to run a state. It is no way to live and no way to vote. I am voting for hope, for change and for Beto O’Rourke. Please join me in keeping the faith.
Louise Butler is a retired educator and published author who lives in Edinburg. She writes for The Monitor’s Board of Contributors.
