On November 17th, the Braintree High Administration received a credible report that a student had a handgun on him at Braintree High School. The school sheltered in place, police were notified, and escorted the student to the police station.
To Braintree High School principal Mr. Keuther, safety is a priority. The school has students watch a safety video at the beginning of the year to set a precedent for safe behavior, such as noticing warning signs around mental health and encouraging students to speak with trusted adults.
“I think the video helps us to understand that everybody has a piece in the safety and security responsibility of the school. When [we] started at the beginning of the year, we all wanted a respectful school environment.”
While Mr. Keuther hopes students are open to talking to him about happenings in the school, he emphasized the importance of other faculty in the building.
“You see things, and could potentially hear things that could make schools unsafe. And when you hear those things, if we can collectively say we’re going to make sure that our school stays safe, come to an adult. It helps us to then get the information so that we can then process as to whether or not it’s real, credible, and it helps us determine what the next steps are and make your school safe.”
When seeing or hearing something dangerous that can affect a community, Mr. Keuther believes that everybody can help conduct a possible solution to make safety more efficient for the adults at BHS.
“So do I think that the video applied to the actual… that occurred? I’m not going to say yay or nay to that. No one came to me and said: ‘Our Sandy Hook Promise program caused me to do this.’ But I think anytime that you can open up a conversation that talks about those things and really puts on the forefront the fact that everybody’s responsible and has a responsibility to make sure this place is safe. I think anytime that you have conversations of that nature, they’re positive. I think communication is really important about it. Really opening up the doors, saying that, look, we want to have that communication, and then building really great relationships with our students is significant.”
As much as teachers and staff’s opinions matter, students have their own side to share. Sophomore Nick Berman has his own point of view on the Sandy Hook Promise video shown at the beginning of every school year.
“I think the video about school safety gets to the point where anything [can] happen in our school. We could be prepared for any incidents in our school that we all can handle as a team.”
Because of an alert by the principal, Nick has a better understanding of the importance of watching the video in the first place.
“Well after experiencing what happened on November 17th, I now understand why we watch that video and kind of have an idea on if we see something dangerous, we immediately ask for help right away.”
