CC EXCLUSIVE: Beyond Columbine
“What they witnessed that day was supposed to be an anomaly, but instead it turned out to be just the beginning. Former Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis sat down with Campus Contingency to discuss that fateful day 24 years ago and the lessons we continue to learn today to keep our students safe. ”
by Jennifer Williams
Nothing prepared Frank DeAngelis for April 20, 1999.
DeAngelis had been principal for almost three years at Columbine High School outside of Denver, Colorado, when his assistant interrupted a meeting in his office that morning to tell him there were reports of shots being fired at the school.
Thinking at first it may be a hoax or a senior prank with the school year drawing to an end, he left his office, but quickly realized how real it was when he saw Eric Harris pointing a gun at him from down the hall. “It was surreal moment where everything slowed down and I thought, ‘This can’t be happening,’” says DeAngelis.
Harris fired shots that missed DeAngelis and shattered glass behind him. At that moment, a group of girls came into the hallway between the shooter and the principal and DeAngelis hurried them to safety. He later found out his good friend, teacher and coach Dave Sanders caught the gunman’s attention at the same time when he rushed into the hallway to help usher students to safety. Harris shot and fatally wounded Sanders, a veteran teacher who had spent 22 years at Columbine. Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 people and injured 24 people that day, using various firearms and homemade bombs, before taking their own lives. Later investigations showed they had been planning the attack for months.
It was not the first school shooting in the United States, but it captured the country’s attention like never before. “The tragedy of that day changed our community—and our country—forever,” DeAngelis says.
The man who had served as a teacher and coach at Columbine for 17 years before becoming principal struggled with continuing to lead the school following the tragedy. But DeAngelis says he found strength in his faith and in the overwhelming support of his “kids,” and the community to see them through the dark times. “I made a commitment at first to see the freshman at Columbine graduate,” he says, then that turned into a vow to stay until all the kids who had been in the system that fateful day graduated.
DeAngelis retired in 2014 and then served as a safety and security consultant for the Jeffco School District in Littleton, Colorado, before joining Safe and Sound Schools, a nonprofit organization founded by parents who lost children at Sandy Hook. There, he serves as a special advisor for education leadership and travels the country advocating for safer schools as someone who has lived through the worst.
DeAngelis says while there have been many improvements to school safety, no plan can be 100 percent effective. “No matter how many security measures you put in place,” he says, “if you have somebody who is mentally unstable and they are intent upon harming other people…really, I mean, how do you how do you stop that? That's kind of the scary thing, I think, for everybody right now.”
Each school tragedy puts a spotlight on cracks in the safety armor that is quickly addressed by schools all over the country, continues DeAngelis. Columbine, for example, at the time had cameras and a school resource officer who was just returning to campus that morning. The SRO exchanged gunfire with the shooters, but the protocol at the time required that officer and the others who responded to the school to wait for the SWAT team to go inside to confront the gunmen.
Today, the strategy of waiting to enter the building seems nuts, says DeAngelis, but it was the protocol of the day. “At that time, there really wasn't security [or a security plan] because that wasn't even in anybody's head that [anything like that] was going to happen,” he says.
“[At] Sandy Hook…they had locked doorways and you had to buzz in and this was the first time a gun person or a perpetrator shot through the glass,” says DeAngelis. “So after Sandy Hook, [schools] started putting a special film on their windows…but now you look at what happened recently in Nashville they had a weapon strong enough to penetrate that film…unfortunately, I think these perpetrators are trying to be one step ahead.”
And while the chances of any school dealing with an active shooter situation are statistically slim, administrators, teachers and parents across the country continue to prepare for a situation that Columbine forced to the forefront 24 years ago.
“Many of the things we're doing [in schools today] are a result of the lessons learned from Columbine,” says DeAngelis. “But it's frustrating at times when you see some of the events that are happening now and unfortunately it seems like we're making some of the same mistakes—and that's kind of heartbreaking to me at this point.”
And while improved safety measures are invaluable, he says, nothing takes the place of having relationships in place—with students, with parents, with law enforcement, with mental health professionals.
“The key is all these pieces working together,” says DeAngelis.
This is the first in a series of articles based on a recent interview with Frank DeAngelis. To watch the interview in its entirety, visit xxxx. Check out upcoming Campus Contingency newsletters for a closer look at how these key pieces are working together, how law enforcement has evolved and improved school safety and how the continued destigmatization of mental health is so important today.