DETROIT — Oxford Community Schools had staff members trained on threat assessment practices outside the district, but never established teams or used any of the tools designed to avoid school violence before the Nov. 30 attack, two former board members alleged Monday.
Oxford board President Tom Donnelly and former Treasurer Korey Bailey made the accusation Monday, saying they both began to research school safety measures in the months after the shooting and learned the district didn't follow policies it had in place that could have prevented the attack that killed four students at Oxford High School.
"We found there was training outside the district but no evidence teams were created and policies practiced," Donnelly said.
Bailey said the district failed to implement the training and the results were fatal. Four students were killed in the attack: Madisyn Baldwin; Tate Myre; Hana St. Juliana; and Justin Shilling. Seven others were injured.
"I believe if they had, the situation would have ended on Nov. 29 and Nov. 30 would just be another day in Oxford," Bailey said.
Donnelly said there was "never a thought of putting a team together" on Nov. 29 and 30 to conduct a threat assessment.
"We didn't know what we didn't know," Donnelly said. "We never activated the team, we never did drills."
The pair said when their raised their concerns to the board, they were told by a nondistrict person, who they declined to identify, that "this would bankrupt the district and tear this community apart."
"We could either go along and stay silent, (or) move along and be a voice for change," Bailey said.
Attorney William Seikaly also declined to identify the nondistrict person but said "insurance companies take over the messaging" in cases like this.
Bailey said the board has been told that since early days after the shooting that "it had all the right policies and staff in place, but a bad thing still happened."
"We got a report saying they praised our teams and we did a wonderful job with our security plans," Bailey said. "If all of this were true, how would the shooting happen?"
The pair first described their concerns Sunday to families of victims of the attack — four students were killed and seven others injured in the gun rampage at Oxford High School.
Donnelly and Bailey have previously alleged that gunman Ethan Crumbley was given a student screening test at school to identify those who are at risk for social-emotional behavior problems. They questioned Monday whether the district looked at those results and could have acted on them.
The test is known as SAEBRS and stands for Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener.
Seikaly said the information was obtained by the former board members as part of their investigation into the school shooting and was not part of closed sessions on board business.
Oxford school officials and district attorney Tim Mullins were not immediately available Monday for comment. In civil litigation, the district has contended it has government immunity against claims of negligence and other charges.
District officials have three times declined a review of its actions by state Attorney General Dana Nessel and instead has hired Guidepost Solutions, an investigations, regulatory compliance, monitoring and security consulting firm that is performing a full review of what happened at the high school the day of the shooting and in the days leading up to the deadly attack. It also hired Varnum Attorneys at Law in Grand Rapids to represent the district in investigations, reviews and litigation connected to the shooting.
Both Donnelly and Bailey told The Detroit News in September that they began to research the district's threat assessment plans and policies over the spring and summer and learned that policies adopted in 2004 and 2011 were being introduced as new to the public after the Nov. 30 shooting.
Based on his research, Bailey told the News in September that the last training anyone at the high school attended was at Oakland Schools, the intermediate district, in 2018. Bailey said at the news conference Monday that he had found eight district staffers who completed the 2018 training and that most of those people remained employed in the district the week of the attack.
Most Michigan school districts put threat assessments policies in place to address school crime and violence. Often found under a "school safety information" tab on school websites, the policies typically outline plans and strategies for evaluating problems or threats, promoting school safety and minimizing the likelihood of school crime and violence.
———
