After hearing rumors that a student at Massapequa High School Ames 9th Grade Campus brought a gun onto school property, district officials launched a full-scale investigation which led to the suspension of the suspected student.

According to Massapequa School Superintendent Dr. Lawrence Pereira, the first step in the investigation was led by Ames Principal Dr. Joan Blednick and Assistant Principal Peter Gangi. The building administration began the investigation by interviewing students and trying to track down the source of the rumors and attempting to substantiate those rumors. After a couple of days of investigating themselves, the Ames administration then called in the Nassau County Police Department to assist in the investigation and to inform the department that there was a possibility of an unauthorized handgun in the community.

"Both of those investigations were buttressed by our school attorney, Richard Guercio becoming involved and also interviewing students for the purpose of trying to understand what had occurred. All of this because we take any suggestion of a weapon or a handgun in the school as something that's very serious and basically we do everything we can to investigate and follow up," said Pereira.

Despite the thorough investigation, the district was unable to prove that in fact a handgun had been brought into school, but they were able to determine that, in the district's opinion, the behavior of one student, who the superintendent noted was a juvenile under the age of 16, was questionable. Based on the information gathered through the investigation the student was suspended from school for the rest of the academic year. The student will be able to attend the high school next year.

"When something like this happens you don't always have the evidence that you want but, in fact, it may be that you see other kinds of behaviors that come up in an investigation that may or may not be related directly to the incident," said Pereira. "You start investigating a car theft, maybe you discover what you've really got on your hands is a burglary, so sometimes, and I can't tell you exactly about this one, but I'll tell you that generally, sometimes an investigation begins in one place and ends in another and that can result in a suspension."

Pereira, who is in his first year as superintendent of the district, is unaware of any instances such as this one in the past but he noted that a rumor of a student bringing a gun into school is taken more seriously now following the school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. "We have an absolute responsibility to take any suggestion of a weapon completely seriously and, in this case, we used our administrators, we used the police department, we used our school attorney,we used every resource, realistically that we had to investigate fully the possibility that there had been a weapon and we will follow up that investigation with conversations regarding how we can better inform students about the seriousness of having weapons in school," said Pereira. The superintendent said that these follow-up discussions may also lead to some programmatic implementations to ensure that students understand the implications of weapons in school and why the district is opposed to it. He believes that these steps will help to prevent incidents such as this in the future.

Throughout the investigation, Pereira made sure that PTA representatives were informed about the situation. Many parents, especially the parents of students who were interviewed as part of the investigation, called the superintendent's office to get further information. Pereira noted, "I gave them full and complete information, as I knew at that time, as to what was happening." Last week, when the investigation was completed, the superintendent drafted a letter to be sent to all the parents of Ames students and to be sent to the elementary schools to be distributed. [See letter on page 12]. Pereira also made phone calls to PTA representatives to let them know about the incident and how it was handled. The parents of the student who was suspended were also involved throughout the investigation.

The Massapequa School District has a policy of zero tolerance, which they implemented in this instance. Pereira noted, "The Zero Tolerance Policy means that it is our intention not to look the other way, not to make excuses for any student who commits a serious act of violence or brings a weapon onto the school property. The term zero tolerance comes from the fact that we intend, in those cases, to pursue vigorously the full extent of the remedies that we have available to us such as bringing in law enforcement or long-term suspensions or even expulsion from school."