School Climate & Safety News in Brief

Newtown Educators Defend Efforts to Address Sandy Hook Shooter

By Tribune News Service — October 23, 2018 1 min read
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Two former Newtown, Conn., educators are defending the school system’s work with a young Adam Lanza in a 22-page rebuttal handed to state senators last week, four years after the primary report on the childhood and schooling of the Sandy Hook shooter was released.

Authors Michael Regan and Janet Calabro said the document is an effort to show the steps the school district took to keep Adam Lanza in school and productive. They contend he was on relatively stable ground when he left Newtown High School, and that his downward spiral over the next three and a half years was out of their control. The district’s work, they contend, is slighted in the official record of Lanza’s mental health and school experience. Regan is former director of pupil services; Calabro is the former supervisor of special education.

It is the most detailed account to date by any Newtown school official about how the district believes it dealt with Lanza’s phobias and emotional turmoil. The document adds to the chronology of the worst elementary school mass shooting in history, the murder of 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. Lanza, 20, also killed his mother and himself.

A version of this article appeared in the October 24, 2018 edition of Education Week as Newtown Educators Defend Efforts to Address Sandy Hook Shooter

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