District Meeting On School Safety Thursday: Be There

If you attend any meeting this week, it should be Thursday’s special school district meeting on safety in our schools. It’s called “Lessons Learned: Keeping Our Children Safe,” and the subject is the recent threats to various schools in Martinez, Concord and Pleasant Hill.

The man who is suspected of making those threats faces arraignment in court today. He is facing 14 felony counts of criminal threat and impersonating another. Larry Bantola, 36 years old, is an Antioch resident with no connection to Martinez, other than the fact that his former friend is an Alhambra High graduate. Bantola, angry at his former friend, sent faxes, emails and letters to schools threatening the students, and signing the name of his former friend in an effort to discredit him.

If Bantola is found guilty of the crimes, he will hopefully serve an appropriate amount of time for the disruption, fear and worry he put our communities through. Messing with the safety of children is simply not ok. Schools are supposed to be places of safety.

The Martinez school district is taking the opportunity to meet with the community on Thursday and review what happened when the district received the threats. Administrators want a chance to explain their responses, and hear concerns from the community about those responses.

The meeting will take place from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Martinez Jr. High School Auditorium.

Some parents felt that the district should have provided more information about the nature of the threats, so they could better decide whether or not to send their kids to school. Fair enough. The decisions made were being made quickly, in the heat of the moment. There wasn’t much time for debate.

But now that a suspect is in custody, and it’s fairly clear that there is no threat to student safety, it’s a perfect time to sit down and review the procedures the district took, explain the situation and context in which those decisions were made, and hear from the parents, students and other community members about those decisions.

Hopefully, the floor will be open to ideas on how to improve the communication between the schools, students and parents in the event of future emergencies. We are fortunate to have a small district that is responsive to the community it serves.  This meeting is proof of that. Please try to attend.