Montgomery County district gives timeline of Pennbrook Middle School attack, announces safety forum
LANSDALE — Details are coming into focus of an April 17 attack that left a Pennbrook Middle School student hospitalized, as parents continue to prod the North Penn School District to take more action to investigate the incident.
District officials outlined their findings so far, and a forum coming up soon, as parents sounded off in a safe schools committee meeting on Monday night.
“Tonight, our agenda is really to review the incident that occurred on April 17 at Pennbrook Middle School, to clarify some of the misinformation, and some of the details that are out there,” said Superintendent Todd Bauer.
On that afternoon, a seventh grade student at Pennbrook was seriously injured during an attack by another student, and the next day several Pennbrook students and parents told the school board they had warned school counselors and staff of prior threats from the alleged assailant and a “hit list” that indicated the victim and several other students were at risk.
During that meeting, students said they were kept in the school’s cafeteria during cleanup after the attack, while parents noted discrepancies in the length of time students were in lockdown, and called on the board to take immediate action to address their safety concerns.
Bauer, district Coordinator of Safe Schools Brandon Rhone, and solicitor Kyle Somers outlined the questions and concerns they’ve heard from parents, the district’s findings so far, and the policies and procedures they’re following as the attack is investigated.
“I recognize that it is frustrating, from a community member’s vantage point, that they want to know more details. But there are federal and state laws preventing us from sharing certain details without the permission of families, regarding their children,” Bauer said.
Disciplinary procedures
Bauer began by outlining the district’s disciplinary processes, without referring to that student specifically, and how disciplinary cases can be handled.
“Anytime a student is excluded from school, for more than three days, they have the right to an informal hearing. And that informal hearing is essentially a sit-down, discussion and trial, if you will, and presentation of evidence,” Bauer said.
After that first hearing, administrators and/or the school principal might make a recommendation to the superintendent about any discipline, and any appeal from the student’s family could end up being heard by the school board, thus the lack of public comment so far from either, Bauer said.
“I think it’s really important to point out to the community that those discipline proceedings have not yet occurred. So the timelines are, that if a student is excluded from school for more than three days, that must occur. When a student is detained, that timeline is kind of put on pause. So when the student is no longer detained, that is when those proceedings would continue. Those are some of the matters we’re working through right now, but those things have not yet happened,” he said.
Timeline of attack
Regarding the duration of the attack and the subsequent lockdown, the superintendent gave some specifics, based on review by staff afterward.
“There was a school security personnel, and another adult in the building, who intervened immediately. And the incident, both students involved were restrained and broken up in under six seconds,” he said.
“There were comments at the last board meeting, and I saw on social media, talking about 28 minutes: that was regarding the duration of the hold, not the incident itself. There were adults there, there were adults who intervened immediately, and I am proud of the ways in which they immediately acted,” Bauer said.
Regarding the letter sent by the school principal that afternoon, Bauer said he has heard “very fair criticism,” and said it was sent while trying to maintain a balance: “When we know that an incident occurs, we provide as much information as we can, without having all of the facts yet. So there was a letter that was sent, that people took offense to, because (the principal’s) comments referred to it as a ‘physical altercation,’ and I understand” the offense to that characterization, he said.
“This was a template letter, that is utilized to get information out to families quickly, and then further detail would typically be provided later in the evening, after students and staff have been interviewed and we have more information. And on this evening, that letter came from me,” Bauer said.
Eight or 28 minutes?
During the April 18 school board meeting, several students disputed the timing of the lockdown, and Bauer explained the difference.
“When gathering that information, and sending it out to families as quickly as is responsible, we asked that question: at what time was (the lockdown) lifted? The answer at that time was, eight minutes. We have since gone back and reviewed videotape, radio transmissions, and interviewed the folks who were involved with the hold itself,” he said.
The incident hold, to keep students in classrooms instead of hallways, was called by the principal at 1:27 p.m., just after the attack, and in the minutes immediately after, the staff separated the students, called emergency personnel, and contacted parents; at 1:33 p.m., the principal called the office “to lift the hold, and it was announced. So, it was actually just under eight minutes. However, that announcement was not heard down in the cafeteria, where all of the seventh graders were,” thus the delay for that group until about 1:51 p.m. when those students were let out of the cafeteria.
Board member Kunbi Rudnick said her daughter is in eighth grade at the school, and had said the hold lasted “about 10 minutes,” which fits the timeline for non-seventh-graders.
“One of the gaps it sounds like we’ve identified is that, obviously, people have to be able to hear in the cafeteria,” she said.
Safety measures
Safe Schools committee chairman Jonathan Kassa added that the committee and staff have worked with outside security experts to develop safety data dashboards, and done prior outside assessments of school safety and communications systems, “to make sure in every room and facility, the messages would be received,” and said the staff and committee can publicize that work.
“Part of this comes down to: there are areas that we need to own, where there were failures, and if there weren’t failures that we can improve. And there are also areas across the district where there’s some strengths,” he said.
The last point of the presentation came from Somers, the solicitor, who explained that the third-party investigation will aim to gather facts about what occurred, including interviews with those who saw the incident, “and make as accurate a finding as possible about what took place,” then make recommendations about changes “in order to avoid a similar circumstance in the future.”
“At this moment, the district is working to identify well-qualified entities to conduct that investigation,” he said, with the exact timeframe still to be determined, and a recommendation likely for one of the board’s May meetings.
Next steps
Rhone and district Chief Academic Officer Mike McKenna outlined next steps they’re suggesting, including updated training on the state’s Safe2Say system for reporting tips confidentially, talks with Montgomery County safety officials, and meetings with local law enforcement.
The district received just over 300 such tips during the 2022-23 school year, Rhone said, and Bauer said so far, he has found “there were no Safe2Say tips regarding this incident. There were students speaking with (staff), or providing information, but Safe2Say is different from a student talking to an adult, or teacher, or staff member.”
According to McKenna, invites will go out shortly asking for families and staff to join a district “School Safety Action Committee,” and all schools currently have critical event response teams, which may soon see new members and more structure around when they meet and what they discuss.
“These teams consist of building administration, counselors, nurses, custodians, school climate coordinators. They typically have some professional staff, along with support staff who are part of those teams. Moving forward, we’re looking to add a couple students to these building-based teams, to add a student perspective,” he said.
Administrators are currently planning to meet with staff and students at every school to discuss safety concerns, and will summarize their findings at the next Safe Schools committee meeting on May 28.
Bauer added that the district is also planning a public meeting and Q-and-A at 6 p.m. on May 14 for the public to discuss the Pennbrook incident specifically, staff have shared the district’s Safe Schools website with parents including a district-wide security audit from 2022, and have been in contact with the district’s legislators to discuss ways the lawmakers can support “bigger issues at play, when it comes to comprehensive school safety.”
Parents sound off
The group then fielded roughly an hour of public comments, from parents and residents asking for more specifics, faster action, and more accountability from those involved or may have known about threats beforehand.
Pennbrook parent Andrew Pushart asked about whether prior threats from the alleged assailant had been communicated to administrators, and why the school principal used the form letter.
“Is the climate at North Penn such that teachers and administrators just toe the line, and they’re not allowed to use common sense? The principal, looking at that template, should’ve said ‘This doesn’t meet this situation, I’m gonna put out my own information,’” he said.
“Even your immediate steps are: school safety committees, staff committees, listening sessions. All of those, to me, mean something that’s scheduled, not something immediate. It seems to me that it’s kind of kicking the can down the road. In aviation, if we had an incident, we didn’t wait two or three weeks to say ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do,’ information was passed out immediately: ‘You stop flying this, or fix this,’ within days.”
Bauer answered that other measures have already happened, including increased security and police presence in schools “that we wouldn’t share publicly,” and said talks are ongoing with administrators about how to do more.
‘Ducking … solutions’
Dan Buccarelli then said he thought the comments so far had been “linguistic gymnastics” instead of immediate action: “The problem is, committees and bureaucrats like yourselves, who are ducking commonsense solutions,” and said his daughter had experienced similar bullying at Pennbrook years ago.
Susan Dziedzic questioned the district’s threat assessment policy and procedures, citing specific language and verses, and asked for more specifics about each school’s safety team.
“How are the staff made aware of these teams and their functions? And what specifically is the training that is being given to staff? And are these teams addressing concerning accumulating behaviors of a specific student over time? That’s important. This policy exists to prevent exactly what happened at Pennbrook from happening,” she said. “We can’t live in a community in which violent behavior is accepted and normalized.”
Jason Lanier questioned how the public would know if the third party investigator was independent, and questioned whether the attack revealed shortcomings in “the restorative discipline, where you’re giving kids additional breaks, over and over again, for breaking rules within the school, and it gets worse and worse.”
“I know that this assailant had a long history, and yet kept being put back in classrooms. Why was this happening? Is this restorative nonsense, where you’re just trying to pad your discipline stats?”
Stephanie Palovcak questioned the length of the hold and where the principal was during the incident, and whether the seventh-graders should have been released sooner: “I think they should’ve been lifted from the hold as fast as possible, so they didn’t have to sit there and watch all that cleanup.” She then questioned whether the investigation would look at prior incidents involving the alleged assailant, and asked how to talk to younger students. “We have sixth grade students who are scared to come to middle school. Are we going to address that with them? Because they are afraid to come to middle school,” she said.
Bauer answered that based on video and communications reviews, the Pennbrook principal “was down in the cafeteria inside of 20 seconds, following the incident,” and talked to students there, then went to the school office to help with communications, and Somers addressed the scope of the study.
“Any outside investigation will look at the day of the incident itself, but also the events leading up to it: and those events would be in the hours, days, weeks, months, and if need be even longer, leading up to the incident itself,” Somers said.
Other parents added similar comments, adding that they felt the investigation into the alleged assailant needed to look back several years, voicing concerns about other bullying cases and communication about them, and whether or why Pennbrook staff told students to get off of their phones in the aftermath of the attack, and not communicate with their families.
“A lot of the reason why we’re all here tonight is to be able to learn what our blind spots are, and for administration to answer some of these questions,” Kassa said.
North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on May 16 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street in Lansdale, the safe schools committee next meets at 5:45 p.m. on May 28 online, and the special forum will be held at 6 p.m. on May 14 at North Penn High School, 1340 Valley Forge Road in Towamencin. For more information visit www.NPenn.org.
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