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An Incident of School Violence in East Greenbush, New York

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An Incident of School Violence in East Greenbush, New York An Incident of School Violence in East Greenbush, New York by William B. Patrick Contents February 9, 2004: The Shooting …………………………………………… 3 Characters ……………………………………………………………………. 93 What People in the East Greenbush Central School District Learned And What They Changed in the Days and Months after the Incident ……………………………………………….. 94 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………… 139 Appendices ………………………………………………………………….. 142 Appendix A: A Brief History of School Violence in America Appendix B: Witness Statements Appendix C: Defense Attorney’s Affirmations & Jon Romano’s Handwritten Suicide Note Appendix D: A Letter from the Defense Attorney to the District Attorney, & Court Records of the Plea & the Sentence Appendix E: Memoranda & Summary of SAVE Committee Meetings & Hank Kolakoski’s Staff Response Letter to Terry Brewer Appendix F: East Greenbush Central School District School Safety Plan & An Overview of Project SAVE & a Summary of Threat Assessment in Schools Appendix G: Press Statements, Session Minutes, Chronology of the Incident, Letters, Memos & School Maps Appendix H: Notes & Letters from Jon Romano & Letters of Support from Lorraine Barde & Friends 2 February 9, 2004: The Shooting In most ways, Monday, February 9, 2004 at Columbia High School in East Greenbush, New York was a normal, school-year Monday. It was seasonally cold, around 18 degrees at dawn, and cloudy, but it was supposed to get up to the mid-30s by the afternoon. At least school had not been cancelled. The Friday before, a snowstorm had forced Terry Brewer, the Superintendent of the East Greenbush School District, to declare a snow day, so whatever class work was missed on Friday got pushed into Monday. John Sawchuk, one of the Assistant Principals at Columbia, got up before 5 a.m., as he usually did, and went through his customary morning routine: Take a shower, eat breakfast, read the paper, leave the house about 5:50, drive in to school from Clifton Park so he could be at school by 6:25. Kids would start arriving at 7:00, and classes would start at 7:35, so John needed his drive time to think and plan, as well as the half hour before staff and kids arrived at school, to write down what he had to do for the day and to finish up whatever small paperwork jobs were left. A big part of an Assistant Principal’s job is serving people, and John was dedicated to that job. Once staff arrived, his attention would shift to them -- he always had to factor in the time for the inevitable stream of daily referrals that would demand his presence. He was also in charge of discipline, and had a serious weightlifter’s physique to underscore that role. 3 So the minute John arrived in his office, he went to his easel and wrote out his schedule for Monday, February 9. He had two slightly unusual tasks to fit in that morning. He had to make up an observation that had been originally set up for Friday the 6 th with Nancy Van Ort, a Math teacher. It wasn’t formally arranged, and he hadn’t spoken with Nancy over the weekend to re-schedule it, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have a problem with him just showing up to observe her. The big thing on John’s mind was the reporter from Channel 9 who was coming in to do a focus-on-education piece. John and Steve Leader, a Technology teacher at Columbia, had coordinated the donation of a plasma-cutting tool through the local Rotary Club, and Channel 9’s reporter was supposed to show up about 9 a.m. to interview both John and Steve and to cover a demonstration with a number of students working on their projects with the new tool. That kind of public relations was important, and John had to coordinate all of the pieces that would make the event go smoothly before the reporter arrived. * * * Across town, Lorraine Barde was getting ready to leave her home on Petalas Drive. She had an early meeting at the Veterans Administration Hospital that Monday morning, so she wanted to be on the road by 7:45. Lorraine decided she wouldn’t wake her son, Jon Romano, before she left. Even though he was 16, Jon didn’t have to get up early for high school anymore. He had been taking 4 classes at Hudson Valley Community College, and his first class on Mondays was at 10 a.m. She could wait and call to wake him after her meeting. Lorraine was feeling a lot less anxious about Jon that morning. Finally, after a really hard year, things seemed to be working out for him. But about fifteen months before, in late November of 2002, Lorraine had begun to suspect that Jon was seriously depressed. “It was his sophomore year, middle of his sophomore year – right before Christmas,” Lorraine remembered. “I had gotten a call. Jonny was not doing well in school. He had failed Math the year before, taken it in summer school and got in the 90s. But back in regular school, he was having trouble again with Math. We had been going over it every night, and he seemed to understand the process but he would have all these careless mistakes, you know. He was having problems in Biology, too, and I got a call from his Biology teacher and she said she was concerned about Jon because he wasn’t doing well and he seemed . well, she didn’t know whether he had a learning disability, or possibly depression.” That call had confirmed Lorraine’s feelings. She had been worried about him for a long time. Jon’s Biology teacher promised to contact a guidance counselor, and suggested that Lorraine try to do that also. Lorraine made some calls and left some messages, but she doesn’t remember hearing back from anyone. “In any case, a few days later I talked to his teacher again, or we were exchanging e-mails, but she hadn’t been able to get down to the Counseling Office either, and she said that after Christmas, for sure, because she felt that Jon should be tested for any disabilities or whatever. In the meantime, well, we had Christmas, 5 and then school started up again, and it was probably only a week or two into that semester when I got a call from Jonny, from school, saying, ‘Mom, could you please come get me, I can’t take it anymore.’ And I said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ I went and picked him up and I asked him what was the matter, and he goes, ‘Could you take me to the doctor? Is there something they can do to make me feel better?’” After that, the medical roller coaster ride had begun. When Jon told his pediatrician he had entertained thoughts of suicide, the pediatrician suggested Celexa, an anti-depressant, for him. Celexa is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), like the better-known Prozac or Paxil, that is often prescribed in the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders and some personality disorders. SSRIs produce side effects, though, from less serious ones like drowsiness and headaches to scary ones like increased feelings of anxiety and suicidal ideation. The manufacturers of SSRIs fervently deny any link between the use of their legally prescribed drugs and suicidal tendencies, but many patients and their families have lodged accusations and instigated lawsuits during the last few years, claiming those serious side effects had led to suicides and wrongful deaths. Scientific evidence for any link between SSRIs and suicide has been slow in coming and has been contradictory: Early in 2006, GlaxoSmithKline issued a press release that admitted an analysis of their clinical trial data had shown a statistically higher incidence of suicides in patients who had been taking Paxil (one of their SSRIs) than with a placebo, but a separate study released in November of 2006 concluded that SSRIs actually lower suicide rates in children. 6 In any case, Jon’s pediatrician had declared those side effects were rare and had started him off on a low dose. Lorraine wanted a second opinion, and made an appointment with a psychologist, who diagnosed Jon with major, clinical depression, and speculated that he had probably been suffering with it for a couple of years, at the very least. He supported the use of the SSRI, and Jon began taking it. At the same time, Lorraine had begun to meet with Tim Crannell, one of Columbia High School’s Assistant Principals, to reduce Jon’s workload at school and to change his schedule. Though the school seemed accommodating at first, as far as she was concerned, that didn’t last long: “So then I called the guidance department back to see if they had reduced his workload, and they refused, ‘Oh, we never said we would agree to that. We didn’t say that. We could re-arrange his schedule, but we never said we could reduce his workload.’ They brought up home tutoring again at that point. This was at the beginning of March. And Jonny and I, neither one of us really wanted it, but we said fine, because he just wasn’t being able to go to school. I wrote a letter on the 11 th of March, mailed it the next day, and that was the day, on my way into work, when I got a call from Jonny’s psychologist, saying, ‘ I just got a FAX from the school. I think he’s a danger to himself, and I don’t think he should be alone .’ I turned around and I didn’t even go into work.
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