Some Berkeley High Students Say They Should Have Been Warned Sooner of Alleged Plot to Attack School

It wasn’t the type of news Mim Walter-Welch expected — or wanted — to receive during their final week of high school.

But, then again, much about Walter-Welch’s pandemic-infused secondary school experience hasn’t gone anywhere remotely according to plan.

The last few years “have been very stressful,” Walter-Welch, a Berkeley High School senior who uses they/them pronouns said on Thursday afternoon, just after completing their final day of high school.

To cap off a year full of undesired plot twists, Walter-Welch and thousands of their fellow students on Wednesday night received an email from the school announcing that Berkeley police had arrested a 16-year-old boy suspected of trying to recruit other students to participate in a shooting or bombing at their school. The note explained that police had received a tip from an individual in the community nearly a week and a half earlier and searched the boy’s home, where investigators found explosives components and assault rifles, several knives and electronic items that could be used to create additional weapons. The suspect, who has not yet been identified, was arrested on Monday after turning himself in, police said.

Police have not released the name of the suspect or confirmed whether he is a student at the school. It’s also still unclear whether other people were involved in the plot.

Walter-Welch has generally felt safe at school during their four years here, during which no major incidents have happened, they said. But, in this instance, they are critical of the administration for not alerting students much earlier.

“This was just a scary thing to hear about after the fact,” they said, noting that students were not informed until nearly two weeks after police learned of the initial threat. “Which is really scary because we didn’t know that we were in any type of danger when we were still going to school. We were not warned. And that was a lot to take in.”

In the days leading up to the arrest, there didn’t appear to be any additional security officers on campus or any other extra safety measures taken, Walter-Welch said.

“Entrances were open. No one was there. They didn’t seem to actually do anything while I was on campus,” they said. “When we all got the email, [my friends and I] all started texting on our group chat. And there’s a lot of frustration about not knowing about the danger that we could have been in.”

News of the plot and subsequent arrest comes as schools and communities across the country are already on high alert following last week’s horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.

And at Berkeley High, specifically, Wednesday’s announcement follows a series of recent traumatic incidents, including last week’s nonfatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Civic Center Park a stone’s throw from the school, and the death of a student in April who fell from a nearby parking garage.

Brent Stephens, outgoing superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District, praised the police response to the threat, and said he had been assured during the investigation that there was no immediate danger to the school community.

But Stephens also acknowledged the delay in notifying students and staff, and the questions that might raise.

“It does seem like a fine line and, frankly, sort of a dilemma that we were facing over the course of the week, and that is common to school administrators,” said Stephens, who sent a district-wide email notifying parents on Wednesday evening, shortly after the announcement from police. After learning of the search from police, he said, district officials decided to initially inform only a select group of administrators and campus safety staff.

“We operate schools in a framework of laws. We also work closely with the police department. The last thing we wanted to do was compromise their investigation by sharing too many details,” he said, adding that the district also plans to conduct its own investigation. “And we also know that we have to comply with certain laws regarding privacy.”

Stephens said the district, like most school districts, is prepared for a wide range of security “contingencies.”

“We’ve been thinking about these issues for quite some time,” he said. “And that set of contingencies seems to be expanding very rapidly over the last several years.”

Schools in the district have for years prepared for intruder and active-shooter events, and are required to annually update and submit school safety plans, Stephens said.

In a follow-up letter to parents on Thursday, he also noted that every classroom in the district now has “Columbine” locks on the doors, which enable teachers to secure them from inside without a key.

Officials have also begun a new comprehensive review to assess campus vulnerabilities, and recently created a full-time safety coordinator position “for the purpose of maintaining the freshness of everybody’s knowledge related to all of these contingencies,” Stephens said.

The district, he added, is also trying to expand mental health resources for students, including the creation of a new district-wide mental health coordinator position, while also building on curriculum to help students identify concerning behavior among their peers, and appropriately report it.

“There are a whole set of pressures that our young people are experiencing, some related to the pandemic, others related to social media and what feels like the increasing pervasiveness of violence in our society,” Stephens said. “So we’ve been having conversations over the last two years to sort of build on previous efforts about expanding mental health supports for all of our students K-12.”

For Walter-Welch, all of these incidents and precautions serve to underscore what they hold as a simple truth: that now, more than ever before, being a high school student can be tough.

“Something I’d like people to consider is that, especially if you know a high schooler, it’s a lot to deal with, especially with COVID and everything,” they said. “So just to be considerate of the fact that it’s a lot and people are under a lot of stress, and just be kind.”