A student at Arlington High School was recently found with a firearm in their possession while on campus. This is now the third gun-related incident within the past two years, leaving room for a variety of opinions to form.
One incident took place last spring, when bullets were found by a student in the bathroom.
“I saw the note on the toilet paper holder. I just thought it was a joke so I threw it away at first, then I went to go wash my hands and saw two bullets just sitting on the sink,” Natalie Boyd (11), said.
Parents were notified that this was not considered a real threat to the school.
“I don’t know if it was real. I wasn’t really thinking, I was just like going to flight mode like this needs to be taken care of,” Boyd said. “Teachers came to the bathroom right away, grabbed the note, some bullets, and the bathroom was closed off.”
This situation was handled before the school day started, with no additional lock down put into place. It was handled quickly and quietly by the staff according to Boyd.
In an article published by the Washington State Standard, 2,275 incidents regarding weapons were reported in public and private schools.
“A Washington Post Investigation found 1 in 47 school-age children, or about 1.1 million students, attended a school where at least one gun was found,” (Deng 2024).
There have been weapon related incidents throughout the state over the course of the school year.
Administration focuses on handling the incidents first-hand before notifying the public. This includes families throughout the school.
“We do want to communicate. We want to be transparent… we want people to know this happened, but we are limited on things we can share,” Kyle Axelson, AHS Administrator, said.
Axelson said there are protocols the school and administration must follow regarding any violence based incident that occurs at the school. This is to make sure they are not inciting fear to the people.
“We want people to hear it from us, because a lot of rumors get spun,” said Axelson. “We always do a debrief a day or two after something like this happens to talk about how we handled it.”
“The number one thing I think is the most important is making sure that staff and students feel safe when they’re in the building,” Axelson said.
