Gresham High School students, parents voice safety concerns after gun incident

Students, parents and teachers at Gresham High School are bringing safety concerns to the school board, after a series of incidents involving weapons at the school.

The most recent incident occurred on September 20 when a student was arrested for bringing a loaded gun to school.

“Every day I ask myself: is anyone going to do anything again? And I’m pretty nervous. It’s distressing. I don’t feel safe,” said Gresham High School student Benny Enriquez.

“We feel like we’re not protected enough or the staff aren’t trying hard enough, and that has to change because otherwise one of us, someone, will end up dying one day .”

Enriquez plans to participate in a student walkout Thursday, demanding that the district improve its response to security threats, particularly after the Sept. 20 incident.

“None of us knew anything and I didn’t even know until I came home and my mom told me. This scared me a little because apparently the school knew about it since morning, and they basically didn’t do anything about it until lunch.

Parent Jake Fray and his son Landon tell a similar story.

“I finally texted Landon and Landon said, wait, what’s going on? So Landon didn’t even know there was a gun at school and you said the teachers didn’t know, right? “Yeah,” Landon said.

The Gresham Teachers Union says this incident follows a series of incidents involving weapons at the school. He also claims the district has ignored student and staff safety concerns for years.

In May, 97% of teachers and staff voted against the district’s leadership and administration.

Asked if he felt like the administration cared about the safety of students and staff, Fray said, “No.

Fray is a former student of Barlow High School. He is also a leader in Gresham-Barlow’s youth sports program. He says Barlow doesn’t seem to have the same safety concerns as Gresham, and he thinks that speaks to leadership.

“We’re supposed to be equal and things don’t really seem equal between the two schools, and I think we need to have some accountability at the Gresham leadership level to make sure that we have that equal level,” he said. -he declared.

District administrators declined an interview, but a district spokesperson provided this statement:

The Gresham-Barlow School District expresses its thanks to the building administration and campus supervisors who worked to quickly identify the armed student and take him to a safe location. Thanks to their courage and commitment, we were able to avoid a tragedy.

We want the community to know that after any school safety incident, we meet with school administrators and other key building personnel who are part of our emergency response team to review what is happening. happened and how the team reacted. We also review feedback from students, staff and families. We are always looking for ways to improve our processes and procedures.

School safety is everyone’s business. We must continue to work together so that our students can learn, grow and thrive in our schools.

The school board meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.