It's been nearly three years sincestudent TJ Lane shot six people at Chardon High School, killing three.Joe Bergant was superintendent of Chardon schools during that time. Since retiring in 2013, he's been advocating for school safety, as he did at a Ohio School Boards Association conference last week.Earlier this week, he told ideastream's Tony Ganzer that part of his own recovery efforts after the shooting has been promoting school disaster preparedness.[audio href="http://audio2.ideastream.org/wcpn/2014/1007bergant.mp3" title="Listen to the Interview"][/audio]Here's a snippet of their conversation:Q: "How do we better recognize kids who may have issues that we can head off before it gets to an active shooter situation?"
A: " The school shootings that I've researched, a lot of them just seemed like typical kids in classrooms, really didn't have anything discipline wise, one way or the other, just seemed to be they basically came out of the woodwork. I know working with some of the FBI people, there are ways to profile people, but you really need to be an expert in order to profile. As far as working in schools, certainly the bullying programs and the harassment programs are important. One of the shortcomings in public education in most places is we don't really deal with mental health issues at all, and I know that the Ohio Department of Education is trying to find some resources to do that. Will it stop it? I don't think so, but it will certainly help the general population."
Q: "Do you think there's enough emphasis on the prevention aspect at this point?"
A: "In my discussions with law enforcement since that tragedy, they all say the same thing: you really can't prevent it. If somebody has it in their mind they're going to shoot somebody, kill somebody, murder somebody, or cause some tragedy, they're going to do it. Schools are still safe places to be, in my opinion. I think we just need to continue that, and we need to continue working with children, so they're accepting of each other. And again, if you see something wrong and it doesn't look right, tell somebody."