School was canceled Thursday at Apalachee High School after a student was arrested and charged with having a firearm on school grounds, Barrow County officials said.
Parents, students and staff have been pressuring district leaders to implement more safety protocols at the school since a student was charged in the shooting deaths of four people at the campus in Winder in September. The tension in the community reached new heights this week, and the Board of Education scheduled a meeting for Thursday afternoon.
A 14-year-old male was taken into police custody Wednesday afternoon and faces multiple charges, including possession of a weapon on school grounds and theft, according to a press release from the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office. Law enforcement officers have not received any reports that the student threatened anyone with the gun. Officials did not provide additional details about how the teenager got the weapon on the property.
Following the arrest, parents, students and community members staged a protest at the campus Wednesday. They chanted “Change for Chee,” which has become a rallying cry since the shooting, and held signs with messages like, “We deserve better.”
Thursday’s school board meeting will discuss “school safety plans” or “policies related to weapons in schools,” according to the agenda for the unplanned meeting. The discussions will take place during a closed-door session.
Another rally was scheduled ahead of the Thursday meeting.
The arrest comes four months after a 14-year-old student is accused of shooting and killing two teachers and two students at Apalachee High. It was the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history.
District staff members have been researching the viability of different safety and security measures, they said, and planned to make recommendations to the school board later this month. Members of the community had until Dec. 13 to answer a survey about several security changes.
This week, parents and students asked the district to consider implementing clear bag policies or requiring that school doors be locked at all times. They have also advocated since the shooting for the implementation of a weapons detection system.
“With our lives at stake, it’s unacceptable that safety won’t be addressed until the mid-spring semester,” Sasha Contreras, a student who was in one of the classrooms where the shooting took place, told the school board Tuesday. “Despite my gratitude for the efforts made, the Board of Education’s inaction is becoming harder to excuse.”
She and another student described feeling helpless, regularly finding unlocked or unguarded doors on the campus and not seeing an increased law enforcement presence at the school.
Prior to this week, the school board has resolved to hire an additional eight school resource officers and to put phones in classrooms to aid in communication.
