‘Protect kids, not guns’: Boise students call for action after Texas school shooting
Wednesday was the last day of school for students in Boise.
It’s supposed to be one of the best days of the year — a celebration just before the start of summer break.
Instead, it was a somber day, according to students and parents.
A day after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Idaho students said they walked into their classrooms feeling anxious and even fearful — worried their school could be next, and heartbroken that yet another community is in mourning.
“I’m so scared,” Simon Richardson, a Boise High School student, told the Idaho Statesman. “It could have been our last day … it could have been us.”
Students and parents in Idaho said they were devastated and at a loss for words after what is now the second-deadliest K-12 shooting in U.S. history. Students said it’s hard to feel safe, and parents said they fear their kids will go to school one day — and not come home.
Some said they have watched as schools and families are wrecked, and they called on politicians to do more to prevent these deadly shootings.
There have been nearly 170 people killed in mass school shootings in the U.S. since Columbine in 1999, according to The Associated Press.
“It is so frustrating not only that we allow people to do this,” said Hannah Sharp, a Boise parent with two schoolchildren, “but we refuse to take responsibility.”
Students, teachers call for action
Many students and teachers at Boise High School wore orange to school Wednesday in solidarity with the Uvalde community.
“Hunters wear orange so they don’t shoot one another,” read a post that circulated among students and staff on Tuesday. “Tomorrow, on our last day of school at Boise High, we’re wearing orange to stand in solidarity with the victims of the Uvalde massacre and demand our elected leaders stand up to the gun lobby.”
Students also held a moment of silence during the day to remember those who died and wrote in chalk on the sidewalk in front of their school to urge elected officials to take action.
“No more moments of silence. We want action,” one student wrote. “Protect kids, not guns,” another wrote.
Richardson, who advocated this year in an attempt to get a resolution passed in the Legislature on gun violence, said he was still in shock over what happened.
The children who were killed were mostly in third and fourth grade, according to multiple news sources. Richardson said it was heartbreaking that 10-year-olds were victims. For the students who lived through the day, it’s going to stay with them for the rest of their lives, he said.
“I’m angry and I’m disappointed in our legislators for not doing anything. This keeps happening. Parkland and Sandy Hook and now this,” Richardson said. “It’s so hard for me, as a youth, to see that the people in charge of our country don’t do a thing to save lives.”
Richardson described the last day of his junior year as the “quietest” last day he’s ever experienced.
Trinity Compton said that going to school Wednesday, she thought about how it could happen here — to her school, her friends, her family.
“All these instances and mass shootings and school shootings, they just start to flow through your head and you just think, this could be me, this could be me right now. And like, ‘Oh, I didn’t tell my mom I loved her this morning. Oh, I didn’t say bye to my cat. I didn’t say bye to my dog,’ and that should never happen in a school,” she told the Statesman.
Compton said people have become desensitized to the violence.
“These politicians and lawmakers … are putting their desires, their wealth, their needs in front of the people that they’re supposed to be leading,” she said. “In Idaho and everywhere, I think that our politicians are failing us.”
Earlier in the school year, Boise student Caroline DiVietro played a piece with her high school orchestra that included a tribute to the children and teachers who were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 — the nation’s deadliest.
During the piece, 26 students stood on stage, each with a candle. Someone read the names of each person who died in the shooting. Each time a name was read, one candle would go out.
“It was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever participated in,” DiVietro said. “And just the fact that we’re back there again, today, it’s just absolutely terrible.”
Police increase presence at Treasure Valley schools
Multiple law enforcement agencies increased their presence near and within schools throughout Treasure Valley after Tuesday’s shooting. In Uvalde, an officer was present at Robb Elementary School, but the 18-year-old shooter “overpowered” the officer and entered the school, the Austin American-Statesman reported.
The Boise and Nampa police departments increased their presence throughout their school districts Wednesday, the departments’ respective spokespeople told the Statesman by email.
Boise Police Department spokesperson Haley Williams said the department has a team of school resource officers who will continue to be at schools within the West Ada district until next week, when its school year ends.
Williams declined to comment further on the number of officers or how they were working with school officials.
“We also will continue to work closely with the school districts to review safety plans. SRO’s (school resource officers) and additional officers will also continue monitoring for threats and other concerns and we will assign our resources as needed,” Williams said.
The Nampa Police Department “intentionally increased” its visibility at schools on Wednesday and plans to continue doing so until the end of the school year, spokesperson Carmen Boeger told the Statesman by email. Boeger said school resource officers would be present during school dropoffs and pickups.
Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue said in a statement emailed to the Statesman that the department “will continue to be alert and observant” of any suspicious activities at schools.
Patrick Orr, spokesperson for the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, said school resource officers asked for extra presence “when possible,” but there was no specific schedule for it.
The Caldwell Police Department declined to comment.
‘School is not a safe place for our kids to be’
Hannah Sharp, a parent of two Boise School District students, told the Statesman she was scared to send her second-grader to the last day of school.
“I don’t want to be one of those parents who picks their kid’s body up from school,” she said through tears.
“School is not a safe place for our kids to be, and that is a horrible thought to have.”
Estefania Mondragon said the same thought crossed her mind regarding her niece after she read about the shooting.
“Emma was over yesterday and as soon as I saw the news, I realized she is going to be in school next year,” Mondragon said in a phone interview. “The thought of ‘they grow up so fast’ turned quickly into watching babies get gunned down and thinking the worst about Emma.”
Watching media coverage of the Uvalde shooting struck another chord with Mondragon, because she saw so many Latino victims. Mondragon is an immigrant-rights activist for PODER of Idaho.
“Seeing brown faces just hit home and I realized that we are being slaughtered now, too,” she said.
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean shared a personal story in a media release. She said she remembered “the horror” she felt after the Sandy Hook shooting, when children younger than her then 9-year-old son were gunned down.
“I cannot imagine the horror and pain their families are going through right now, though as a mom, I can feel in my gut the depths of trauma that they will forever feel,” McLean wrote in the release.
Local politicians issue ‘prayers,’ some Idahoans call for reform
The Uvalde shooting sparked comments across social media, with parents sharing concerns and others calling for gun control.
Sharp couldn’t help but make connections between Texas and Idaho. Both states have many gun owners and more lax gun laws. Sharp said Idaho legislators have refused to consider common-sense regulations, like requiring concealed carry permits and banning firearms from city parks.
The shooting struck a chord with one elected official.
Luke Cavener, a Meridian City Council member, tweeted, “Yes, I’m a gun owner, a 2A supporter. But before that I’m a dad who acknowledges the status quo is not working.”
Gov. Brad Little issued a statement on Twitter calling the tragedy “horrific” and saying as a grandfather of school-age children, the shooting was “heartbreaking.”
“The families and all those affected will be strengthened by our prayers as they cope with this awful tragedy,” Little tweeted.
Little’s call for prayers and the lack of comment from Idaho’s federal lawmakers frustrated people like Sharp, who said it shows “no one is trying to stand up for our kids and keep them safe.”
“Thoughts and prayers are not going to keep someone from taking a gun and shooting up a school,” DiVietro said. “What would keep someone from taking a gun and shooting up a school is better gun laws.”
In her release, McLean offered prayers and also called for gun reform.
“The vast majority of Boiseans and Americans want reform that would encourage responsible gun ownership and keep weapons of war out of the hands of people who would walk into an elementary school and murder almost two dozen children,” she wrote.
Mondragon was born and raised in Idaho and knows guns are “part of the culture here.” She said she has shot semiautomatic weapons and her family owns them. But she said the Texas shooting and others over the past few years have made her realize “there is just no need for guns.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
