Annunciation Catholic School principal Matthew DeBoer said it could invite families and students to return to classes in stages. It’s not clear yet when that will happen.
“We’re choosing to live in love, that’s the best security we can have, knowing our neighbors by name,” DeBoer told MPR News Thursday.
Two died and 21 people, most of them children, were injured on Aug. 27 as an individual with multiple weapons shot students and adults as they worshipped at the start of the school year. Students tried to shield others and took cover under pews as bullets, shrapnel and glass flew around them.
DeBoer said he and his colleagues were working on a plan with the help of trauma-informed specialists and other school leaders who had been through mass shooting incidents.
“We know kids need connection, they need community,” DeBoer said.
He and others at the school said they’re hoping to reconvene as a community “sooner rather than later” and are relying on advice from trauma experts and those who’ve experienced mass shootings in schools to guide them in helping kids process the violence.
“We have some children who won’t talk about what happened or really at all,” DeBoer said. “We have some kids who go to the park and what play looks like when you’ve been through something like this can look pretty terrifying, because you reenact things that have happened in your lives.”
The church and school are not planning extensive changes to their security protocols.
“We have a pretty solid exterior security system … we will continue to be asking what we can do to keep our kids and our staff safe,” DeBoer said, adding that students were on the floor in protective positions within seconds of when the shooting started.
“I want to believe that this was one human being … that we are not at risk for this happening again,” DeBoer added. “We could believe that everyone’s at risk all the time and that would be living in fear. We’re choosing to live in love and continuing to just support each other and be community.
Annunciation held its first church service just days after the mass shooting in an auditorium on campus.
In a message online Wednesday Father Dennis Zehren thanked parishioners for holding onto hope in the face of “unimaginable tragedy.”
“We begin the light of a new day, we welcome the light of a new day at Annunciation. It is a light that will scatter every darkness, it is a light that will never be extinguished,” he said.
He also thanked community members for their love and support and said that the school planned to move forward with its motto: “A future filled with hope.”
“That’s the plan,” he added. “We will see you, we will be here, we are with you, we are for you, we are all together in Jesus.”
