March 6, 2001

Police and security personnel patrol Grossmont Union campuses daily in an ongoing effort to prevent the type of violence that jolted Santana High School yesterday.

Superintendent Granger Ward said district and school officials had done everything they could to ensure safety at Santana.

"I think we have one of those situations that you pray never happens," Ward said. "We had staff who did what they were supposed to do and law enforcement who did what they were supposed to do."

Santana has a part-time sheriff's deputy who is assigned to the high school and five schools that feed into it.

The 1,900-student school also has seven full-time campus supervisors who roam the grounds. Such non-police security personnel supervise schools around the district and are trained to prevent and deal with violence.

Security at Santana was as tight as it could be without having a total lockdown, a jail-like situation, said Dan McGeorge, president of the Grossmont Union High School District board.

Personnel at several of the district's 11 regular high schools, including West Hills, Chaparral and El Cajon, said yesterday they recently had been through training with police and SWAT teams on how to handle a shooting or other crises.

Trustee Ted Crooks said Santana is a leader in trying to minimize violence. Student leaders there and on other district campuses are trained as peer counselors to talk about problems with classmates and to try to defuse issues on campus before they escalate, Crooks said.

Schools participate in violence prevention training and all have plans for addressing disasters, district leaders said. All schools in the Grossmont district have an employee who coordinates safety programs, said Dave Hunter, assistant principal at West Hills.

West Hills and other schools in the district have hand-held metal detectors available to detect weapons, but they are not used for regular or random searches, Hunter said.

"You have to ask, is that really what we want on school grounds, to make every kid go through a metal detector?" Hunter said.

At Santana, Principal Karen Degischer said students talk about their problems in support groups on the campus. They also have organized peace marches in recent years.

Breanne Schaum, 16, a junior at Monte Vista High School, was at a hospital yesterday because one of her friends was wounded. She wants to ask the school board for metal detectors.

"This is crazy. This shouldn't happen. Nobody checks anything. Nobody takes anything seriously," she said. "You hear about threats. (But) nobody thinks it's going to happen.

"I don't think it's right that people should be afraid to go to school."