JULIE RIDDLE

The Alpena News

ALPENA — At 12:52 p.m. Wednesday, Alpena High School students paused to think of other teenagers who died at the hands of a gunman one year ago at Oxford High School.

“That was a year ago?” a student asked, shortly before Principal Romeo Bourdage spoke over a loudspeaker, asking students to observe a moment of silence in honor of the lives lost in the shooting that left four dead and seven injured.

Students respectfully bowed their heads, marking the anniversary of the moment police were called to the tragedy that inspired security measure changes at schools statewide, including in Alpena.

At the beginning of this school year, Alpena Public Schools announced multiple new security measures at all of its schools, including backpack restrictions, strict visitor screening, and blockaded interior windows.

After the Oxford shooting, district officials spent six intensive months researching security upgrade options and best practices. Some of those the district implemented right away, while others became policy changes this fall, said Lee Fitzpatrick, APS director of communications.

Not all of those changes were popular, but they could all save lives, Fitzpatrick said.

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“Is it an inconvenience not to carry a bookbag? Sure it is,” Fitzpatrick said. “But what if that is the step that keeps them safe?”

A gunman on Nov. 30, 2021 took the lives of students Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Tate Myre, 16, Hana St. Juliana, 14, and Justin Shilling, 17, at the Oxford school, injuring six other students and a teacher.

“In honor of the Oxford school mass shooting that took the lives of four teenagers while robbing an entire district of its feeling of safety, the state of Michigan will have its flags lowered to half mast, and high schools across Michigan will remember the tragedy with a moment of silence,” Bourdage said, as students sat quietly in classrooms.

Meladie Parr, an AHS sophomore, said after the moment of silence that Oxford showed that small towns are not immune to school violence.

She still feels safe coming to school, Parr said, acknowledging that, although some new safety rules inconvenience students, the school district took those steps to keep those students safe.

“We can only do so much,” Parr said. “AHS is definitely trying their hardest to make sure that they can do what they can to prevent something like what happened at Oxford to happen here.”

In the months following the Oxford shooting, schools around the state reported threats of violence that closed many schools and led to criminal charges against some students.

Alpena schools reported several similar threats, as did schools in Rogers City and in Hillman.

At the same time, district officials were pouring over volumes of products and services offered by companies hoping to get in on the school security boom. Some of those products could have ended up wasting large amounts of taxpayer money and proven unreliable in an emergency if the district rushed to enhance its security package, Fitzpatrick said.

Some students buck against the new restrictions, he said.

“Just like a parent at home, not everything’s popular,” Fitzpatrick said. “But you’re always trying to do the best for your kids.”

New protocols include a multidisciplinary team, made up of school officials, mental health representatives, and others, that responds quickly if a student seems to pose a potential physical danger to others or themselves.

Some Oxford residents, including two board members, have said policies and procedures adopted by the district — but never implemented — could have prevented the shooting.

“You just think of the steps that could have stopped that,” Fitzpatrick said. “Then you suddenly realize the importance of all these changes that add up to provide as much safety as you can.”

Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old student at the time of the shooting, in October pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism charges related to the shooting.

The Michigan Supreme Court this week delayed a planned January trial so the state appeals court can consider whether Crumbley’s parents should have been criminally charged for ignoring their son’s mental health needs and making a gun accessible at home.