Principals from schools with shootings form support network

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the days after a teenager shot and killed three fellow students at Ohio’s Chardon High School in 2012, then-Principal Andy Fetchik remembers getting a call from someone who knew just what he was experiencing. “We’re not experts in recovery, but we’re experts in the fact that we lived through it,” Fetchik said, “and I think that it will provide a resource that kind of confirms to the school leader that there’s others out there and they’re not alone.” When a teenager shot and wounded a classmate at West Liberty-Salem High School in 2017, leaders from two other Ohio schools that experienced shootings reached out with valuable suggestions, such as having an open house before resuming classes so students and staff could ease back into the building that some had fled, Principal Greg Johnson said. A year later, after two students were fatally shot and others wounded at Kentucky’s Marshall County High School, Johnson wanted to offer help but had trouble connecting with the principal — understandable, he said, given the crush of communications, support and well-wishes that a school must sort through in such circumstances. Principal Warman Hall, of New Mexico’s Aztec High School, eventually connected with DeAngelis after two students died in a 2017 shooting on the school’s campus.