HARFORD, Md. — “The whole incident was really nerve-wracking," says Kenny Finlay.
Kenny Finlay is the father of a student at Joppatowne; he says the day of the shooting made him realize a lot has to change in the school system.
“And I had just had a conversation with my daughter about, Hey, do you know what to do in case that happens?" says Finlay.
He says it's why he came to Patterson Mill Middle School—to be a part of the conversation that will shape the future of safety in Harford County Schools.
“To be able to come to this meeting, that's one of the things that we can say is like, Hey, how can we get more effective communication?" says Finlay.
He and other parents also want to see more school resource officers in schools and better security measures like locked doors and metal detectors.
“One cop car, two cop cars, three cop cars—there were a hundred cop cars that were going that way.”
Margarita Salah lives less than a mile from Joppatowne High School, and although she doesn’t have any children enrolled in any schools, she says the day the shooting happened made her really want to get involved in the school system, so she joined the conversation.
“It's very effective and purposeful. The process was very very good, so its very purposeful and very fruitful," says Margarita Salah.
The meeting was set up in small groups; each person there got to share their ideas and listen to others, with everyone providing input and the board of education taking the feedback directly.
“We wanted to create a format where people actually got to have extended conversations about this. So you know the format we have here will allow everyone to participate as much as they want or need to," says Superintendent Sean Bulson.
Although the conversation was positive, it took a while to get to this point. The shooting happened over a month ago, and there have been a few board meetings since then.
Two of those meetings filled with hostile and divided opinions on who is to blame for the shooting and who should be held accountable, and what happened at Joppatowne put an even bigger divide among the school board members.
“Unfortunately the polarization at the board meetings isn’t new; that’s every meeting now for a number of years, so that's an unfortunate circumstance that we can’t find more common ground and ways to work together; there is a lot of finger pointing," says Bulson.
But superintendent Bulson says disagreements will not stop the school system from making necessary changes to improve school safety.
While Tuesday night's meeting didn't come up with any concrete next actions, it did get the conversation started and ideas shared.
The school board will have more community meetings with the exact same format as the one tonight, but the superintendent says the board has not yet decided exactly when those meetings will happen, but it will be in the winter months.
