'Why wasn't I informed': Windsor parent critical of school board's handling of Massey firearms incident

Andrea Meredith found out about a firearms-related incident at Windsor's Vincent Massey Secondary School like many other parents: She watched the news.

Rather than receiving a phone call from the school, or even a note given to her son to take home, Meredith only learned about the incident after her son — a Grade 11 student at Vincent Massey — told her to pay close attention to the evening's broadcast.

It was through the news that Meredith also learned about a hold-and-secure — a precautionary measure similar to a lockdown, but where student life inside the building continues as normal — at her daughter's school, Talbot Trail Public School, the same day.

The Dec. 5 incident at Vincent Massey started when students informed school officials about people in possession of firearms on school property, searching for another student.

School officials informed Windsor police, and two men were later arrested near Talbot Trail Public School.

After learning about what occurred at her son's school, Meredith said she reached out to some of her friends, who confirmed that they also weren't notified.

"Those kids could have went to either school and we could have had a school shooting," said Meredith. "Kids could've gotten hurt."

During a media scrum last Friday, Greater Essex County District School Board (GECDSB) superintendent Sharon Pyke said there was a lack of a communication between Vincent Massey Secondary School and parents because of the media attention that was generated by the incident.

"Students are safe at school," she told reporters. "We have lots of different procedures that we do follow and this is a clear example … Everything worked very quickly and very efficiently."

For Meredith, however, the school board's response rang hollow.

"Why wasn't I informed?" said Meredith. "[That is] something that they should notify the parents about. Not during, because that would cause mass hysteria, but 5 p.m. at night, you can do a robocall and just say 'Hey, there was an incident. School was in a lockdown. All students were safe and suspects were apprehended.'"

Meredith said she spoke with a school official at Massey and expressed concern for the school's handling of the incident.

"And she said just basically said, 'We understand, but we are following the protocols,'" said Meredith. "Well I think the protocols maybe need to be reviewed."

Public school board is focused on student safety, says board of trustees chair

Speaking with CBC News before a public session of a GECDSB board meeting, board of trustees chair Ron Le Clair said the board is focused "on the safety of our students, and we treat that with the utmost respect."

"One thing I think we need to make sure that parents understand is that these situations are very dynamic and fluid," he said. "And in this particular circumstance, we worked with our community partner to come up with a strategy and it worked tremendously."

Le Clair added that school board representatives "didn't have any concern that the students [weren't] safe" during Thursday's incident.

"One of the things we also do is we debrief after every type of incident like this and we're always trying to see if there's anything that we can do better," he said. "It'll be our internal process and we'll discuss all that occurred."

Le Clair acknowledged that he would personally be concerned if he was a student at Vincent Massey Secondary School.

"We did everything that was in our powers at the time to offset that insecurity that people may have had," he said. "We're confident that the steps that we took to put student safety first and that we worked with our partner to resolve it in a very positive manner."

Le Clair wouldn't speak to the board's policy when it comes to communicating with parents about incidents.

"All I can say is that we work with our community partner and we make assessments. We have protocols for hold and secure. We have protocols for lockdowns," he said. "But in this case, at Massey, based on all the information and the dynamic information that was brought to us by our students — who did an absolutely fantastic job — we didn't need to proceed with either of those."

Le Clair said he commended students and staff "for ensuring our students' safety," and also thanked Windsor police "for their actions that were swift and ended the incident in a very positive manner."